Chapter 209 The Last Mother

The rest of the message arrived while Luna was making tea.

She had put water into the pot without lifting the jug. Sera had warmed it from across the room. Risa was watching both of them with an expression that suggested she was trying to find a useful contribution involving lightning.

“Don't,” I said.

She looked at me.

“I haven't said anything.”

“You looked at the pot.”

“I'm allowed to look at things.”

Then our queen reached me, and the little argument stopped being important.

The neighbouring brood had gone back to the old receiving place.

There were living Teeming beneath the dark ridge.

There was also a queen.

They could feel her faintly through the ground, but she was not answering clearly. Water had entered some of the lower passages. The humans who had once used the buildings above had not been seen for several days.

Luna set down the pot.

“Alive?”

“Yes.”

I listened again before saying the rest.

“Something's wrong.”

Sera was already getting her coat.

We told the attendants before we left.

All three came to the opening of the court while the young remained sheltered behind them.

Dot carried the news carefully.

Their mother had been found alive. We did not yet know why she could not answer. We were going to her, and we would send word as soon as we understood more.

One attendant made a short pattern that I recognised only in pieces.

Home.

Mother.

Waiting.

Dot listened, then turned towards me.

“It wants to come.”

I looked at the other two adults.

They moved closer to the young.

The decision was already passing between them.

“One can travel with us,” Luna said. “If they agree the others can manage here.”

They agreed.

The attendant went back inside and touched each cluster of young before returning to the doorway.

I waited until it was ready.

Then we walked together towards the aircraft.

Keir had the large transport prepared before we reached it.

He had expected a journey. He had not known who would be coming back with us.

“That usually means take the bigger one,” he said.

Aster checked the nursery compartment while Dot helped our passenger settle. Toby brought his medical bag. Liam arrived with food, spare clothing, and a folded blanket Anja had pushed into his hands at their door.

Wren stood beside Toby at the foot of the ramp.

She straightened a strap on his bag, then left her hand there for a moment.

“Listen carefully,” she said.

He smiled.

“I've been practising.”

Risa, Sera, and Luna came aboard with me.

Sigmund met us before the doors closed. Holt was staying at the receiving room, where the new information had been added to the map.

“We'll keep the court quiet,” Sigmund said. “Send word when you can.”

Risa hugged him.

He looked at the silver markings on her wrist when she stepped back, but this time he did not ask a question about them.

There would be time for that.

Keir raised the ramp.

I lifted the craft, and we turned towards the old dry country.

It was not dry anymore.

Rain had moved through during the night, leaving shallow pools in hollows that looked as though they had spent years waiting for water.

Luna watched the ground from beside Keir.

“There's a lot beneath it,” she said.

Risa looked towards a low bank of cloud ahead.

“More coming.”

“Soon?”

“Not immediately.”

She closed her eyes for a moment.

I could see her feeling for the storm, separating the charged air above us from the currents nearer the ground.

“There,” she said, pointing beyond the next ridge. “That's where it's gathering.”

Keir changed the approach so we would not have to come down through it.

Toby sat behind him, listening to the aircraft and the country around us.

He had learned to leave most of the sound alone.

Now and then his expression changed as he found something distinct within it, a movement or a rhythm the rest of us would have missed.

Our passenger remained quiet in the rear compartment.

Dot spoke to it softly.

I kept the aircraft steady and tried not to imagine what it was like to return towards a home you had last seen while being taken away.

The receiving place appeared between two shoulders of dark stone.

Three low buildings. A damaged landing pad. An open-sided storehouse with part of its roof missing.

Beyond them, a ridge cut across the water's natural path.

Someone had added walls and conduits to it, making the ground serve the buildings above without caring much about what lay below.

Luna stood before the aircraft had fully settled.

“The water's backed up.”

“I see it.”

Under the ridge, passages ran towards a larger chamber. Some were flooded. Others held air in narrow pockets above the rising water.

Living bodies waited in those pockets.

And deeper in, beyond a collapsed section of tunnel, the queen lay beneath machinery that had stopped working properly.

I reached towards her gently.

No answer.

Not refusal.

A faint, confused movement, as though she had heard me from a long way away and could not find the direction.

Toby came beside me.

“There's something under the landing ground.”

I followed his attention.

A deep vibration passed through the buried conduits at regular intervals.

A pump.

Still running.

Still sending water towards a place that had nowhere left to put it.

I stopped the pump first.

Not the whole building. Just the mechanism forcing more water below the ridge.

The vibration faded beneath Toby's feet.

Luna moved towards the edge of the landing ground and knelt.

“I can take it out.”

“Give me a moment to open the route.”

I followed the old watercourse through the buried walls and made a clear channel around the occupied chambers. Stone shifted, supports formed, and the water found somewhere safe to go.

Luna drew the first flooded passage empty.

Water rose in a broad, clear sheet, curved away from the ridge, and poured into the new channel.

Behind her, Liam warmed the air where the exposed stone was cold and wet. He did not send fire down the passage.

He simply made the place less hostile for anything coming out of it.

Sera helped guide the warmth farther along while I strengthened the damaged roof.

Toby listened.

“Movement ahead,” he said.

A Teeming adult appeared in the opening.

It stopped when it saw us.

Then our passenger came down the ramp.

The sound between them was sharp enough to make me look up.

Recognition.

Dot moved forward, speaking quickly.

The adult at the opening lowered its body.

Behind it, more shapes began moving towards the light.

We did not count them as we would have counted people in a room.

They belonged to a brood whose size we had never known.

We marked every occupied space, checked it, and let the familiar adults tell us where others might still be trapped.

Some came out on their own once the water receded. Others needed support where debris had blocked the passage.

I freed a rear limb from beneath a broken slab and repaired the crushed joint before the adult tried to stand.

Luna kept drawing water away.

Toby found three more bodies behind a wall whose surface looked unbroken. They had sheltered in an old side chamber and lost the opening when the debris fell.

I opened it again.

Warm air moved in.

Sera crouched well back from the entrance while Dot explained that they could come out.

Risa stood above us on the landing ground, watching the sky.

The approaching rain began to turn aside.

She was not trying to empty the whole world of weather.

She was keeping the heaviest part from falling into our open work while we brought the brood out.

I felt the change in the air and looked up.

She saw me.

“Keep going,” she called.

I did.

The queen's chamber was colder than it should have been.

The machinery around her had kept taking from her after the staff left. It had not received a new instruction to stop. Its supply had failed in pieces, leaving some parts dead and others repeating their last work.

There were no active coercion signals reaching out from the site.

The harm was local.

Silver drawn into narrow housings. Feeding channels blocked. A damaged support pressing against tissue that could no longer move freely beneath it.

I could understand all of it.

That did not make it easier to look at.

Our passenger reached the chamber behind Dot.

It stopped at the sight of her.

The queen moved one forelimb a little.

I felt the effort travel through damaged paths.

Then the attendant made the home pattern.

The one Dot had been teaching me.

This time I heard the answer.

Faint.

But there.

“She knows you,” I said.

Dot translated.

The attendant came closer, placing itself beside her head.

I knelt where she could see me.

“Your young are safe,” I told her, through the quiet opening she was beginning to find. “All thirteen.”

The answer was too weak to become words.

But her attention held on me.

I explained that I could stop the machines and repair what they had damaged.

The attendant spoke again.

The queen moved her forelimb towards my hand.

Permission.

I began.

I separated the harvesting channels from their power before removing anything from her body.

The living silver inside them remained hers.

I gathered it carefully, restored the damaged connections beneath her plates, and brought it back into those paths.

At the mountain, the great queen had helped me understand each structure as we worked.

Here, the mother could give me very little.

So I worked from what I could see, from the undamaged parts of her body, and from the knowledge both queens had shared with me.

Our queen stayed close through the connection. The planetary queen joined us when I asked, offering guidance without trying to force the injured mother to speak.

There was no need to hurry past something I did not understand.

I understood enough to keep her safe while I learned the rest.

Her breathing strengthened first.

Then the living paths around her head began carrying clear signals again.

The attendant beside her answered immediately.

I felt the queen's attention spread beyond the pain of her own body.

To the chamber.

To the nearby brood.

To the opening where daylight reached farther than it had before.

Then back to me.

*Thirteen?*

“All thirteen.”

She held the number between us.

I showed her the court at Scarecrow as I remembered it. The sheltered entrance. The three attendants. The young gathering around the feeding bowls.

Not a message forced into her.

Something offered for her to look at if she wanted.

She accepted it.

Her forelimb settled against the floor.

I kept working.

Luna came down when the last flooded passage was clear.

Her boots were dry.

That seemed unreasonable, given what she had spent the morning doing, but I decided to be pleased about it.

“The water's moving away now,” she said. “The new channel will carry the next rain too.”

“Any more occupied pockets?”

“Toby's checking the far side with the adults.”

Sera was keeping the lower chamber comfortably warm. Liam had gone with Keir to inspect the buildings above and see whether anyone remained inside them.

Dot stayed beside the attendant, translating what the queen could manage.

I repaired the damaged feeding structures and the tissue beneath the old restraints.

The queen shifted.

This time the movement was deliberate.

I removed the housing around her nearest joint.

It came apart without pulling at the body beneath it.

She flexed the freed limb.

Luna put a hand on my shoulder.

“That's better.”

“Yes.”

The queen heard the feeling behind our words even before Dot translated them.

Her answer was quiet.

*It is.*

Keir called us from above before I finished the last repair.

There were records in the receiving office.

And two people in a locked room behind it.

Alive.

I looked towards the upper passage.

Sera touched my arm.

“Finish here. We'll go.”

She and Luna left with Dot's recording hand. Dot itself remained with me and the queen.

A few minutes later, Keir reported that the door was open.

The two people were frightened, thirsty, and asking whether the transport had come back for them.

Luna told them who we were.

I heard only pieces through the local receiver. Names. Water being offered. Sera asking whether either of them could stand.

Then Luna said my name.

“Lucas. They're Maeve's friends.”

I stopped moving for a moment.

The queen watched me.

I explained what had happened.

*Your missing,* she said.

“Yes.”

She moved her repaired limb a little farther from her body.

*Find them too.*

“They have.”

I finished the last damaged path beneath her plate with my hands steadier than my thoughts.

Their names were Eren Vale and Tavia Noll.

They sat outside the office under the little shelter Keir had cleared of debris. Sera had brought food from the aircraft. Luna sat with them while they ate slowly enough not to make themselves ill.

Both were older than us, though fear and thirst made it difficult to judge by how much.

Eren had a scar running from his jaw towards one ear. Tavia's hair had been cut unevenly near the back, as if someone had removed a tangled section without bothering with the rest.

When I came up the steps, Eren looked at my hair and stopped chewing.

Sera rested a hand on his shoulder.

“He's the one I told you about.”

He swallowed.

Tavia looked past me towards the open lower passage.

“Is she alive?”

“The queen?”

She nodded.

“Yes. She's healing.”

Tavia closed her eyes.

Luna waited until she opened them again.

“Did you try to help her?”

“We kept the food moving,” Eren said. “When the other people stopped coming down.”

“They told us the transfer would take everyone,” Tavia added. “Then the shuttle came and they locked us in.”

“How long?”

She looked at Eren.

They agreed on four nights.

The water in their room had run out the day before.

Keir looked towards the receiving office with an expression I had come to recognise.

He did not say what he was thinking.

He did not need to.

I examined them after they agreed.

Dehydration. Poor food. A badly healed injury in Eren's shoulder from work he had been made to continue after falling. Tavia had damage to two fingers where a housing had closed while she was cleaning beneath it.

I repaired the injuries and helped their bodies recover from the immediate effects of thirst.

Then I left them with their food.

They wanted to know about Maeve first.

Then Cassian.

Then Elinor and Ivo, whose names they said as though each one might be the answer that finally hurt.

“All four are at Scarecrow,” Luna told them. “They asked us to look for you.”

Eren put his bowl down.

Tavia gripped his wrist.

For a little while, neither could say anything.

Sera moved the water closer without interrupting.

I thought about the little book tied shut with string.

At home, Maeve still had a page waiting for an answer.

I asked our queen to take the news to her.

The office records explained why the site had been left.

Not everything. Enough to begin.

The lower water controls had been damaged in the rain. Maintenance had requested a temporary suspension. The human staff had received transport instructions before the repair crew arrived.

Eren and Tavia had been listed as retained support labour.

There was no name beside the order that left them behind.

Dot copied the entry and the surrounding records.

Aster checked the destination codes from the aircraft's interface. One matched the earlier record Wren had found beside Maeve's account.

We had followed the right path.

Too late to stop what had happened here.

In time to bring people out of it.

Luna photographed the locked room before we changed anything else. The empty water container. The internal handle that had not connected to the lock. The marks beside the door where someone had tried to loosen the fitting.

Then I removed the lock completely.

Nobody would be left in that room again.

Toby returned with two adults from the far passages.

They had found the last occupied chamber and brought everyone through.

He had used the difference between flowing water and living movement to narrow the search, then let the brood guide him through the parts he could not identify by sound alone.

“There's nothing living in the flooded section now,” he said. “We've checked it twice.”

I followed the passages myself before agreeing.

He was right.

Risa came down from the landing ground a little later.

The main rain had passed north of us. She had let the remaining cloud go where it would, keeping only a narrow dry stretch above the aircraft while Keir loaded the supplies.

She stopped beside the shelter when she saw Eren and Tavia.

Luna introduced them.

Risa smiled in a way that made Tavia's face crumple before she could stop it.

Nobody had looked pleased to see them for a long time.

Risa sat beside her.

We gave them a few minutes.

The queen was standing when we returned below.

Her attendant stood close beside her. Other adults had gathered near the chamber entrance, leaving enough room for her to move.

She tested her restored joints one at a time.

Then she reached towards the brood beyond the room.

This time the answer was clear.

I felt it through her, a series of familiar lives responding in their own patterns.

She had been surrounded by them and unable to reach them properly.

Now she could.

Sera stood beside me, her shoulder against mine.

The queen turned towards us.

*The young are waiting in your home.*

“Yes.”

*I will go to them.*

I looked at the doorway, then at her body.

She was smaller than the planetary queen, but far too large for the transport Keir had brought.

We could enlarge it.

We could also bring the young here, as we had with the other mothers.

I explained both choices.

She looked around the chamber.

The restored feeding channels. The marks where the housings had been attached. The floor beneath which the water had risen.

*I do not want their first free memory of me to be this room.*

I understood.

“Then we'll take you to them.”

Keir stood on the landing ground with his hands on his hips while I explained.

He looked at the aircraft.

Then at the opening from which the queen would emerge.

Then back at me.

“You mean another craft.”

“Yes.”

“Not a few extra seats.”

“No.”

He thought for a moment.

“Keep the passenger transport separate. I'll take the people and the attendant. You bring her.”

That was simpler.

It also meant Eren and Tavia would travel in a familiar enclosed space instead of beside a queen they had known only through a prison's machinery.

I made a broad carrying platform with an enclosing shelter, shaping the supports to the places the queen showed me could bear her weight comfortably.

It was not an aircraft anyone else could fly.

It did not need to be for this journey.

I would carry it the whole way.

Keir checked the clearances anyway. Luna made sure no water remained trapped beneath the material we had used. Toby listened as I settled the supports under their test load.

The queen inspected it herself.

Then she stepped aboard.

I adjusted one support where she asked.

She lowered her body.

*Yes,* she said.

So we went home.

I travelled beside her within the sheltered forward section, carrying the platform smoothly above the broken ground.

Luna and Sera came with me. Risa chose to remain with Tavia in Keir's aircraft, with Liam, Toby, Dot, and our returning attendant.

We kept the two craft close enough for ordinary local communication.

There was no strain in holding the queen's weight.

The difficult part was remembering to look at the country with my eyes instead of only feeling the shape of the thing I was carrying.

Sera pointed out the pale ridge where the mother of the eighteen now lived.

Farther on, Luna showed us the water moving beneath a dry-looking plain.

The queen watched through the broad opening at the side.

*I have crossed this ground,* she said. *Never like this.*

“Do you want to go lower?”

*No.*

She settled more comfortably against the supports.

*I would like to see it.*

I slowed enough to let her.

Scarecrow had made room before we arrived.

Our queen had received the plan and asked the people above her to clear the broad approach beside the nursery court.

There was space for the platform to settle without blocking the main street. Beyond it, the passage into the queen's outer chambers was wide enough for our guest after I adjusted one bend from the air.

I told everyone before moving the stone.

Holt stood by the cleared approach, waving people away from the edge with the authority of someone who had no intention of being impressed by a flying queen until it was safely on the ground.

I lowered the platform.

The supports touched stone.

The queen raised her head.

From the court came the sound we had been practising.

This time it was not a recording.

The two attendants brought the thirteen young into the sheltered opening.

The third adult came running from Keir's aircraft and stopped beside them, answering their questions in a rush of taps and vibrations.

The mother did not wait for us to finish lowering the side panel.

She reached over it.

I moved it out of her way.

The nearest young pressed against her forelimb.

Then the others followed.

Small bodies hurried across the stone, stumbled, righted themselves, and crowded beneath her.

One stopped halfway and began making a thin, uneven sound.

The mother lowered her head.

It went to her.

Around us, the city had become quiet.

Not the quiet Toby made.

The kind people chose when something in front of them mattered more than anything they had been about to say.

Our queen waited at the broad passage beyond the court.

When the mother finally looked up, she offered welcome.

Two independent minds met across a few lengths of stone.

The young remained between the mother's feet.

No one asked them to move.

Maeve reached the landing ground before Eren had finished coming down the ramp.

She stopped so suddenly that Cassian nearly walked into her.

Eren saw her.

For a moment he looked uncertain, as if the journey had made him afraid to believe the obvious thing standing in front of him.

Then Maeve ran.

Cassian followed with less hesitation.

Tavia came down beside Risa and covered her mouth when she saw Elinor and Ivo behind them.

The six of them met at the bottom of the ramp in a confusion of arms and names.

I could not hear all of it.

I did not need to.

Sera stood beside me while Luna went to tell Wren the arrivals were confirmed.

One hundred and seventy-seven.

Two more names with somewhere to sleep.

Two fewer empty spaces in a little book.

The mother stayed.

Not because she had nowhere else she was permitted to go.

Because our queen offered her and her brood shelter while they decided what they wanted next, and she wanted time with her young before choosing another journey.

The three attendants stayed with them.

The rest of her brood at the old receiving place had safe passages, food, water, and no active harvesting machinery. She could speak with them again. She sent word that she would return, and the neighbouring queen agreed to help watch the route while we arranged further travel.

We had not moved an entire people in one afternoon.

We had reunited one family and made the next choice possible.

That was enough work for the day.

By evening, the receiving room smelled of soup.

Priya had sent it for Eren and Tavia, then decided there was no point carrying only two bowls when everyone around them had forgotten to eat.

Dov helped bring the rest.

Toby checked on the new arrivals once more and left them with their friends. Wren closed the roster and took his hand as they went towards the square.

Liam disappeared towards his house with Anja, talking fast enough that I suspected he was describing every part of the day at once.

Holt sat beside the doorway with a bowl balanced on one knee.

“Two rescues,” he said when I passed.

“Yes.”

“Try eating before you find a third.”

I took the bowl he offered.

Sera appeared beside me with three more.

“Too late. We've already planned to rescue the table from his drawings.”

Risa laughed.

Luna looked at the bundle of notes under her arm.

“We need those.”

“We need supper too,” Sera said.

For once, Luna surrendered without an argument.

At home, we ate with the windows open.

Risa had left the distant weather alone. Luna had let the water in the jug remain in the jug. Sera warmed the bread and then forgot about heat while she listened to me describe the queen watching the ground from above.

I told them about her question.

What had I lost to heal her?

Risa turned her cup slowly between her hands.

“She'll need time to believe the answer.”

“Yes.”

Sera leaned against me.

“So did we.”

I looked at the silver lines along her wrist, then at Luna's hand resting on the table and Risa's bright eyes across from us.

Nobody was waiting for the cost to arrive tonight.

That did not mean we had forgotten what the old days had felt like.

It meant there had finally been enough better days to begin trusting them.

Luna set her notes aside.

“Tomorrow we can work on the water reserve.”

“Tomorrow,” I agreed.

Risa reached across and pulled my hand towards her.

“For now, stay here.”

I stayed.

Day 589. The last mother.

Mother of the thirteen found alive beneath the old receiving place. Flooding compounded damage from harvesting equipment left operating after staff departure. Pump isolated, permanent drainage restored, occupied passages cleared. Luna handled water, Sera and Liam warmth, Risa approaching rain, Toby search by vibration. Queen's injuries and silver pathways repaired with permission. Brood passages safe and machinery disabled.

Eren Vale and Tavia Noll found alive in a locked room above the site. Confirmed as Maeve and Cassian's missing companions. Injuries treated. Records copied and linked to earlier transfer code. Retained-labour entry preserved. Both brought home and reunited with friends.

Mother transported to Scarecrow at her request on a separate platform I carried. All thirteen young reunited with her and their three attendants. Our queen offered shelter while they decide their next steps. Remaining brood at the old site has safe shelter and restored contact with its queen. Further travel to be arranged with them.

All four captive nursery groups now reunited with their mothers. No young left waiting for an unknown answer.

Human and kit roster: one hundred and seventy-seven. One hundred and seventy-one humans, six kits. Teeming guests recorded separately.

The little book has an answer on its page.

The last court is no longer waiting.