Chapter 272 Growing Stronger

Holt said it first.

The morning after the knuckle, in the map room, under the big map, with a cup of Priya's tea going cold in his hands and the rest of us round the walls. Nobody had slept much. Liam had his arm in a sling and was complaining about it to anyone who'd listen. Sera had her feet up on a chair. The General was standing at the window with his back to us, looking out at the plain, where the Hand hung a mile out with its knuckle closed and empty.

"That was one Hand," said Holt.

Nobody said anything.

"One," said Holt. "One queen. Four hundred handlers in a knuckle, and a few hundred more in the palm and the folds. And we had every brood on Avalon in a ring, and the General's wall, and thirty people round a table eleven light-years away, and a queen in the Hand who'd already decided she was on our side." He put the tea down. "And the handlers didn't know any of it. They came out of a box they'd been sealed in for weeks, expecting a city. They were blind."

"They won't be blind next time," said Luna quietly.

"No," said Holt. "Next time they'll know exactly what's here. Because every Hand there is will hear about what happened to this one, and the first thing they'll do is find out how." He looked round the room. At each of us. "And then they'll come with more. Not one Hand. Five. Ten. However many it takes. With handlers who aren't sealed in boxes and queens who haven't decided anything."

The General didn't turn round from the window.

"The first queen says there are more Hands than broods on this world," he said. "That's what Juno told me. More than broods." He paused. "There are two thousand broods on Avalon."

The room was very quiet.

"We beat one," said Sera. Not arguing. Just saying it. "We beat one, and nobody died."

"We beat one," Holt agreed. "And it took everything we had." He picked his tea back up. "I'm not saying we can't win. I'm saying we need to stop thinking we've already started."

Nobody argued.

That was what I remembered afterwards. Not what Holt said. That nobody argued with it. Liam didn't make a joke. Sera didn't lift her chin. Risa didn't say we'll walk into it together. Even Dory, on Risa's hip, was quiet.

We all knew.

We'd known on the plain, I think. In the moment after the slivers sang and the handlers stopped and the Overseer walked into the middle of them holding its bread. Everyone had felt how close it had been. How much of it had depended on things nobody could have planned. A youngest queen who happened to recognise her sisters. A light-bender who happened to know what the handlers expected to see. Four hundred and twelve Tharn who'd spent thirteen days thinking one thought.

Next time there wouldn't be thirteen days.

"So we get stronger," said Luna.

Everyone looked at her.

She was standing very straight by the wall, with her notebook shut in her hands. Her bag was packed. It was by the door of our house. She was leaving tomorrow at dawn.

"We get stronger," she said again. "All of us. Every one. While I'm gone. While the families are coming. We use every day." She looked at me. "Okafor will say the same thing. You know she will."

"She will," I said.

"Then that's the order," said Luna. "Before she gives it."

The General turned round from the window.

He looked at his daughter for a long time.

Then he said, very quietly: "That'll do, Windsor."

The old one called me that afternoon.

Not through our queen. Directly. Down the long thread from the mountain, the way she'd called the night she first taught me how to fold the weight of a station. I was at the forge, not doing anything, standing with the hammer in my hand and not hitting anything with it, and I felt her come.

Slow. Vast. Like a mountain leaning in at a window.

Boy, she said.

I'm here.

You were on the plain yesterday, said the old one. I watched. Through the young one at the wall. Through the first one in the Hand. A pause. You opened the knuckle. You opened every shell. You stood still and let them come.

Holt's plan.

Yes, said the old one. A good plan. You did it well. Another pause, longer. And when the blade was thrown over the wall, toward the children, it was your mother who stopped it. Not you.

I didn't say anything.

You could have, said the old one. You can read the grey. You could have unfolded the blade in the air. A pause. You did not think of it. You were looking at the handlers in front of you. Your mother was looking at everything.

She's always been better at that.

Yes, said the old one. She has. Because she holds things. You change things. Her attention shifted, very slightly, the way it did when she was about to show me something. Changing is slow, boy. You must see a thing, and read it, and decide, and change it. Holding is fast. You see it, and it is yours.

I put the hammer down.

Your mother's gift, said the old one, is in you. I have seen it. In your memory, the day I gave you my silver. A spoon of metal, carrying you across a dead country, because you had nothing else. Holding a bucket, you called it. You could lift only what you could see with your eyes. You could not see yourself, so you sat in a spoon.

I'd forgotten that. The titanium sled. Dot's idea. Look at something you're sitting in.

It is still a bucket, said the old one. Small. Weak. You have not used it since my silver came. You have not needed to. You change things now. A pause. But your mother's gift was never small in her. Only in you. Because in you it was never finished.

I went very still.

You finished me, I said. On the ice. You gave me your silver and I could see everything.

I gave you my silver, said the old one. I finished the paths your father's gift ran in. The paths that change. A pause. Your mother's gift runs in other paths. Narrower. Older. From her side. I did not touch them. I did not know they were there.

And now you do.

Now I have watched your mother hold three men by their buckles, and twelve cutters at the bottom of a Hand, and a blade in the air over a wall. Her voice was very slow. And I have looked at you. And I have seen her paths in you. Small. Cut short. The way hers were cut short by the ones who made her need the spoon. A long pause. Not by them, in you. By nothing. They simply never grew. Because nobody showed them how.

Can you?

Not I, said the old one. Not alone. I am old and I am far. Her attention turned. North. And south. And out, across the plain. We can.

They came that evening.

Not in their bodies. Our queen was the only one in her body, at her full height in the hollow, at the far end, the way she'd stood when we sang the youngest queen back. The rest came on threads. The old one from the mountain. The first queen from the bottom of the Hand. And down a thread from the sky, faint and far and still weak, the spine-queen, from the Meridian. She'd heard. She wanted to be there.

Four queens. In one hollow. All looking at me.

And a fifth.

Small and pale and feathered, the size of a cat, on Sesh's shoulder at the passage mouth. The youngest queen. She'd come because Sesh came, and Sesh came because I was there.

Risa was beside me, with Dory. Sera. Luna, because Luna was leaving at dawn and wasn't going to miss this. Genny and Garnet, because Garnet had heard the word stronger at supper and followed me down the passage before anyone could stop her, and Genny had followed Garnet.

Toby at the passage mouth with his fiddle.

Lie down, said the old one.

I lay down. On the floor of the hollow, among the shelves of sleeping young, where Sesh had lain when I took her collar off.

This is not like the ice, said the old one. On the ice I gave you my silver. Tonight we give you nothing. Tonight we only show your own silver where it can go. A pause. It will feel strange. It will not hurt.

I know.

You do not know, said the old one, almost gently. But you will.

I can't describe what it was like.

I've tried. I've tried for Luna, in letters that she won't get until she's back. I've tried for Genny, who asked me every hour for a week afterward. I've tried in my notebook.

The nearest I've got is this.

You know how, in a dark room, you can't see anything, and then someone opens a door a crack, and a line of light comes in across the floor, and suddenly you can see the shape of the room? Not everything. Just the shape. Where the walls are. Where the chair is. How big it is.

That.

Only the room was me.

The queens sang. All five. Toby carried it. And as they sang, I felt my own silver. Not the paths the old one had finished on the ice, the ones that ran bright down my arms and out to my hands and let me read and change anything. Other paths. Older. Thinner. Running alongside the bright ones like the small streams that run beside a river in a wide valley. Cut short. Not cut. Stopped. Just stopped, the way a plant stops growing when it's in the dark too long.

Mother's.

I could feel her in them. Not her. The shape of her. The way she held a cup. The way she held three bowls and the flour and the eggs, every morning, in the house in the dead field. The way she'd held twelve handlers at the bottom of the Hand.

They'd been in me my whole life.

I'd used them. A little. Holding a bucket. Lifting Garnet up to the top shelf in the kitchen when she was small and Mother wasn't looking. Pulling myself across a wasteland on a titanium spoon because Dot said look at something you're sitting in.

I'd never known how far they went.

They didn't go far. That was the thing. They went a little way, and stopped. And beyond where they stopped, in the dark, I could see where they should have gone. The shape of it. The way Rory's arms had a shape his body remembered. The way the youngest queen had a shape her sliver remembered.

The queens showed me.

They didn't grow the paths for me. They sang, and as they sang, the dark where my paths should have gone lit up. Like the line of light across the floor. Showing me the shape.

And then they stopped singing.

Now, said the old one. Grow them.

So I did.

I'd grown Rory's arms. I'd grown Sesh's wings. I'd grown the youngest queen a body from a sliver the size of my thumbnail.

I'd never grown myself.

It was different. It was harder, and it was easier. Harder because I couldn't see myself, the same way I'd never been able to see myself, the same reason I'd sat in a spoon. Easier because I didn't need to see. I could feel. Every path. Every place it stopped. Every place it wanted to go.

I listened first.

And then I helped them. A little. In the direction they were already trying to go.

All of them. At once.

Not the way the queen grows a cup. The way Dory had grown herself, out of whole silver, all at once, because she'd decided to.

It went fast.

That's what Risa said afterward. She'd been watching. She said one moment I was lying on the floor of the hollow with my eyes shut and my hands flat on the stone, and the next moment something had changed in the air. Like the moment before a storm breaks. Like the pressure in your ears when Risa pulls the charge out of the sky.

Then I opened my eyes.

And everything in the hollow lifted.

Not much. An inch. Every loose stone on the floor. Every grain of grit. Dot, at the passage mouth, all of her, with every hand still and her wings folded tight. Toby's fiddle, out of his hands. The young on their shelves, in their silver wrappings, still asleep. Garnet, standing beside Genny with her mouth open. Genny. Sera. Risa. Dory on Risa's hip.

All of it. An inch off the ground.

Exactly.

Not grabbing. Not a bucket. Holding. Every grain to the width of a hair. Every one of them. The way you'd hold a full cup without spilling a drop.

I could feel all of them. Every single thing in the hollow, at once. The weight of every stone and every grain and every person. Not with my eyes. With the new paths. I didn't need to see them. I didn't need to see anything.

I could feel myself, too.

For the first time in my life.

I was lifting myself. An inch off the floor of the hollow. Lying flat on my back in the air, with nothing under me, and nothing holding me but me.

"Lucas," said Garnet. Very loudly. From an inch in the air. "You're doing it."

"I know," I said.

"Put me down," said Sera.

I put everyone down.

Gently. Feet first. All at once. Every stone back where it had been. Every grain. Toby's fiddle back in his hands.

Except me.

I stayed where I was. An inch off the floor. Lying on my back in the air.

Looking at the roof of the hollow.

There, said the old one. Very quietly. Now you have both.

I flew that night.

I couldn't not. I came up out of the hollow and through the square and out onto the red glass at the edge of the city, with everyone following me, and I stood there for a moment.

And then I went up.

Not leaning. Not the way I'd made the egg lean, a little further every second, the way a stone falls faster the longer it falls. Not a spoon. Just up. The way you'd lift your hand. One moment I was standing on the glass with my family round me. The next I was a hundred feet over them. Then a thousand. Then the canyon was a red line in the dark under me and the city was a cluster of lamps and the Hand was a shape against the stars a mile out, and I was still going.

Fast.

Faster than the egg. Faster than Sesh. Faster than the skiff I'd built out of a hillside the first year, or the hull I'd flown north to Luna's ice outpost the night she sent ICE HOLDING and then went dark.

So fast the air should have torn me apart. It didn't. Because I was holding it too. Every bit of it, round me, the way you'd hold your coat closed against the wind.

I went round the Hand.

Once. All the way round. Three fingers and a palm. A mile of grey in the dark. It took me less time than it took to breathe in and out.

Lucas, said the first queen, from the bottom of it. Very slowly. Every word right. You are very fast.

I'm sorry. Did I frighten you?

No, said the first queen. A pause. I would like to see you do it again.

So I did.

Then I found out how much I could lift.

I didn't mean to. It was the old one's fault. She'd said both, and I'd thought about the word, and I'd wondered what it meant, and before I'd decided anything I'd looked down at the plain and found the biggest thing on it.

The knuckle.

Not the Hand. Just the knuckle. The base of the third finger. Empty now. The size of the schoolroom. Grey and folded and heavier than anything I'd ever thought about lifting.

May I? I asked the first queen.

A long pause.

It is part of me, said the first queen. Gently.

I held it.

I didn't grab. I didn't push. I held it the way Mother held three bowls and the flour and the eggs. Every fold. Every grain of grey. To the width of a hair.

And lifted.

The whole Hand rose.

Not much. A few feet. The knuckle came up, and the third finger with it, and the palm, and the other two fingers, and the whole of the Hand, a mile of grey in the night sky, rose a few feet higher than it had been. And hung there. And I held it.

It didn't feel heavy.

That was the thing. It should have. It was the biggest thing I'd ever touched. But it didn't feel like lifting anything. It felt like holding a cup. A very large cup, very full, that I mustn't spill.

I couldn't find the edge of it.

I kept waiting to. The place where it would start to hurt, or I'd start to shake, or something in me would say no more. Like the bucket. Like the spoon. I kept waiting, and holding, and the Hand hung there in the dark a few feet higher than it should have been, and the edge never came.

Lucas, said the first queen. Very quietly. You are holding all of me.

I know.

Nobody has held me before, said the first queen. Not once. They built a Hand round me. That is not the same.

I put her down.

Gently. Exactly where she'd been. Not an inch higher. Not an inch lower.

Thank you, said the first queen.

When I came down, everyone was on the glass.

Everyone. Not just my family. Holt, standing, with his arms folded. The General, with Luna beside him. Priya and Dov. Nessa, who'd come down in her nightdress. Pell, very straight, with her hands folded. Juno and Wren and Jessa and Marlo, on Toby's back again. The Overseer at the edge of the glass, holding its bread.

All looking up.

I came down slowly. I didn't have to. I could have come down fast. But I'd been very fast for an hour and I thought perhaps that was enough for one night.

I landed in front of Garnet.

She was standing very still, with her drawing board clutched to her chest, looking at me with her mouth open. She'd been looking at me like that since the hollow.

"Lucas," she said.

"Yes."

"Can you teach me?"

I didn't say yes straight away.

I looked at Genny. Standing beside her sister, very straight, with her chin up and her hands in her pockets. Not asking. Genny didn't ask for things. She waited for them to be offered, and if they weren't, she found a way to make them happen anyway.

Genny had lifted Brock Haddon's car onto a roof when she was nine. All of it. At once. Grabbing.

Genny had Mother's paths too.

And Garnet—

I looked at Garnet properly. With the new paths. Not reading her the way I read stone. Feeling her, the way I'd felt every grain in the hollow.

She had them too.

Small. Thin. Stopped. The way mine had been. The way Genny's were, under the grabbing. Mother's paths, running alongside Father's like streams beside a river. Garnet had turned a pebble into a strawberry with Father's. She'd never used Mother's at all.

"Yes," I said. "Both of you. Tomorrow."

Garnet made a sound like a kettle.

Genny didn't make any sound at all. But her hands came out of her pockets.

The Hand left at dawn.

I'm not going to say much about it. I don't think I can.

Everyone came to the glass. Everyone always came to the glass. The hello went up, and the first queen caught it, and Dory put her net round us, and Mother came through from eleven light-years away and said I'm here, love, I'm watching, and Okafor through her said Windsor. Report.

And Luna said: "Ready."

That was all.

They went up the stair. Luna had built a new one in the night. Shorter, this time; the first queen had lowered the palm until it hung only a few hundred feet over the plain. The General first. Then Luna, with her bag over her shoulder and Sera's scarf round her neck. Then Liam, with his arm in a sling, and Anja beside him as far as the top step, where she stopped, and he kissed her, and went in. Then Toby, with his fiddle, and Wren beside him as far as the top step, and she said something to him I couldn't hear, and he laughed. Then Hana. Then Sigmund, very straight, who turned at the top of the stair and looked down at Risa for a long time, and then lifted his hand, and then went in.

Then Sesh and the six other Kethri with wings, carrying the three who didn't have them yet, with the youngest queen riding on Sesh's back.

Then Marlo and Jessa.

That had been Okafor's decision. At dawn. Through Mother. The watchers talk to Quint. Quint goes. And his sister goes with him, because she'll go anyway and I'd rather it was on my list.

Jessa had said: Yes, ma'am. And Marlo, on Toby's back, had laughed until he coughed.

And the light-benders. Two thousand of them, in the second finger. All there were anywhere. Going to a world they'd never seen, to help, for the first time.

Luna stopped at the top of the stair.

She turned round.

She looked down at us. At me. At Sera, with her hand on her stomach. At Risa, with Dory.

Dory reached out with both hands.

"Lu," she said.

Luna lifted her hand.

Then she turned and went into the palm of the Hand, and the stair melted behind her, step by step, all the way down to the plain, until there was nothing but a fine mist where it had been.

And the Hand rose.

Slowly. Then faster. Up, over the plain, up past the canyon rim, up into the sky where the stars stopped.

And was gone.

Sera didn't cry.

She'd said she wouldn't, and she didn't. She stood on the glass with her hand on her stomach and watched the place where the Hand had been for a long time.

Then she said, "Twenty weeks."

"Twenty weeks," I said.

"She'll be back."

"She'll be back."

Sera nodded.

Then she turned round and walked back up the street toward the house, very fast, without looking at anybody. Risa went after her. I heard the door shut. And then, through the window, I heard Sera cry. All at once. Like a dam going.

Risa didn't say anything. I could hear that too.

I stayed on the glass with Genny and Garnet.

"You said tomorrow," said Garnet. Very quietly. Not like Garnet at all. "Is it still tomorrow? Or is it today now?"

I looked at her.

At her face, which was wet, because Garnet cried when Luna went, and Garnet cried the way she did everything, all at once. At Genny, beside her, very straight, not crying, with her hands in her pockets.

"It's today," I said.

I taught them on the glass.

Not on the plain. The plain was too big and too empty, now the Hand was gone. On the red glass at the edge of the city, where we always stood at dawn, where Luna's stair had started.

"Close your eyes," I said.

Garnet closed them so hard her whole face scrunched up. Genny closed hers the way she did everything. Neatly.

"Now," I said. "Don't think about lifting. Don't think about up. Think about holding."

"Holding what?" said Garnet.

"A cup," I said. "Full. Right to the top. So full that if you tip it even a little bit, it spills."

"I'm holding it."

"Now think about holding yourself like that."

Silence.

"That doesn't make sense," said Garnet.

"I know," I said. "It didn't make sense to me either. Until last night." I knelt down in front of them. "Mother does it. Every morning, when we were small. She held three bowls and the flour and the eggs in the kitchen, all at once, and none of it ever spilled. Remember?"

Garnet's eyes opened.

"She held me," she said. Slowly. "Once. When I fell off the kitchen table. I didn't hit the floor. I just stopped." Her face changed. "I thought I'd imagined it."

"You didn't."

"She held me," said Garnet again.

And very slowly, without meaning to, without closing her eyes again, without thinking about up or lifting or anything at all, Garnet Dask came off the red glass.

An inch.

Then two.

She looked down at her feet.

"Lucas," she said. In a whisper.

"I know," I said.

Genny took longer.

Genny had always grabbed. All at once. The car. The roof. Everything. She'd never held anything in her life; she'd seized it. And when she tried to hold herself, she seized, and went up ten feet all at once and came down hard on her knees on the glass.

She didn't cry.

She got up.

She tried again.

Ten feet. Down. Knees.

Again.

Five feet. Down. Hands this time.

Again.

I didn't help. She'd have hated it if I'd helped. I sat on the glass and watched and didn't say anything, and Garnet floated in circles round the two of us, two feet up, very slowly, laughing.

On the eleventh try, Genny stopped.

She stood on the glass with her hands at her sides and her eyes shut.

And she listened.

The way the queen had taught her. With the paving stone. With the slivers. Listened first. To where her own silver was. To where it wanted to go. To what it had been trying to become, all this time, under all the grabbing.

And then she helped it. A little. In the direction it was already going.

She came off the glass.

An inch.

Exactly.

Genny opened her eyes. She looked down at her feet. Then at me. Her face, which was so much like Father's, did something I'd only ever seen it do twice. Once when she was ten and gave me a diamond. Once on the call, when I wrote YES. I THINK HE DID on Luna's notebook.

It crumpled.

Then she put it back.

"Thank you," she said. Very steadily. "That helps."

The queens came to the wall that evening.

Our queen in her body. The old one on her thread from the mountain. And from the sky, faint and far and getting fainter as the Hand climbed away toward Earth, the first queen, still holding on, still listening.

Genny and Garnet were at the wall too. Garnet had floated there. All the way from the glass, two feet off the ground, down the street and through the garden, with Pell walking very fast beside her saying Garnet, Garnet, Garnet in a voice that was trying very hard not to be proud.

Boy, said the old one.

I'm here.

Your sisters, said the old one. I have watched them today.

They're good, aren't they.

They are better than good. A long pause. They have your father's paths. And your mother's. Both. Like you. Another pause. But not finished. Not the way I finished yours on the ice.

I went very still.

The framework is there, said the old one. All of it. In both of them. The way it was in you. Waiting. Her attention turned toward the two girls at the wall. Genny, very straight. Garnet, two feet in the air, drawing the queen's eye on her board. We could finish them. Tonight, if they wish. The way I finished you. A share of silver. Living. From me. From the one at the wall. From the first one, before she is too far.

They'd be like me.

They would be like you, said the old one. Every path open. Both gifts. No pain. No limit. A pause. Silver in their eyes. In their hair. On their arms.

I looked at my sisters.

Genny, twelve, with Father's jaw and Father's hands. Garnet, her twin, twelve too, with Mother's face and her drawing board and her feet two feet off the ground.

They're children, I said.

So were you, said the old one, when they put you in the program. A pause. And so is the one on Risa's hip, who built herself out of whole silver before she was born.

I didn't say anything.

We will not do it without asking, said the old one. Them. And her.

Her?

Your mother, said the old one. Ask her at dawn.

I didn't have to ask them.

They'd heard. Of course they'd heard. Genny had been talking to stones for five weeks and Garnet had been talking to the queen every morning since the day she drew her eye. They'd heard every word.

Garnet came down off the air. Landed on the stones of the garden, very carefully, on both feet. Looked up at me.

"Yes," she said. "Please."

Genny didn't say anything for a long time.

She looked at the queen at the wall. At her own hands. At me. At my eyes, and the silver round them, and my hair, which had gone silver on the ice and never gone back.

"Will it hurt?" she said.

"No."

"Will I be different?"

"Yes," I said. "But you'll still be you."

Genny nodded slowly.

"Father asked," she said. "Every day. Why must I climb. And nobody ever answered him." Her voice was very careful. "If I say yes, then I don't climb. Ever. And I don't grab. I just—" She stopped. "I just can."

"Yes."

"Then yes," said Genny. "But I want Mother to say it too."

Mother said it at dawn.

The hello was thinner without the Hand. The first queen was further away every hour, carrying our families' rescuers toward Earth, and the spine-queen was still weak, and the door wasn't as wide as it had been. But it was open. And Dory put her net round us, and reached, and found her.

There you are.

There you are, said Mother.

I told her.

All of it. The hollow. The queens singing. Mother's paths in me, growing. Flying round the Hand. Lifting it, and not finding the edge. Teaching Garnet on the glass. She held me once, when I fell off the kitchen table. Genny on the eleventh try, listening first.

And then what the old one had said.

Mother was quiet for a long time.

When she spoke, her voice was very low.

Genny's on the glass?

Yes. And Garnet.

Put them in the net, love.

I didn't know if I could. But Dory could. Dory checked them, both of them, standing on the red glass beside me, and put them in the net with the rest of us, every path joined to every other.

And Mother came through.

Not to me. To them.

I felt it. I felt her find Genny, and Garnet, through Dory, through the hello, through eleven light-years. The way she'd found me when I was small and came in from the field. Taking inventory.

Oh, said Mother. Very softly. Look at you both.

Garnet started crying again. All at once.

Genny didn't.

But her hands came out of her pockets, and she held them out in front of her, palms up, on the red glass, the way Sera and Liam had held their hands out for Rory.

Genny, said Mother. Garnet.

Yes, Mother.

Do you want it?

Yes, said Garnet. Through her tears. Out loud.

Yes, said Genny. Very steadily.

Mother was quiet for one more moment.

Then yes, she said. With my love. And your father's. A pause. And Lucas.

Yes?

Hold their hands while they do it.

Days 799–801. Stronger.

Holt in the map room: that was one Hand. Every brood, the General's wall, thirty people round a table, a queen already on our side, and the handlers blind in a sealed box expecting a city. Next time they'll know exactly what's here, and come with five, ten. The first queen says more Hands than broods; there are two thousand broods on Avalon. Sera: we beat one and nobody died. Holt: and it took everything we had. Stop thinking we've already started. Nobody argued. We all knew how much depended on things nobody could plan. Luna: then we get stronger, all of us, every day, before Okafor says it. The General: that'll do, Windsor.

The old one at the forge: when the blade went over the wall, Mother stopped it, not you. You were looking at the handlers; she was looking at everything. You change; she holds. Changing is slow; holding is fast. Her gift is in me, a bucket, the titanium spoon I sat in because I couldn't lift what I couldn't see, unused since the ice. She finished Father's paths on the ice and didn't know Mother's were there, older, thinner, stopped. Not by the Project. They never grew, because nobody showed them how. Not I alone. We can.

Evening in the hollow: our queen in her body, the old one, the first queen, and the spine-queen faint from the Meridian on threads. The youngest on Sesh's shoulder. Toby carrying. Tonight we give you nothing; we only show your silver where it can go. The queens sang and the dark where my paths should have gone lit up like a line of light under a door. I could feel Mother's shape in them: three bowls, the flour, the eggs. Now grow them. I'd never grown myself. I couldn't see myself; I didn't need to. Listened first. All at once.

I opened my eyes and everything in the hollow lifted an inch: stones, grit, Dot, Toby's fiddle, the sleeping young, Garnet, Genny, Sera, Risa, Dory. Exactly. Holding, not grabbing. I could feel every grain at once, and myself, for the first time in my life, an inch off the floor on my back. Garnet: you're doing it. Sera: put me down. I put everyone down feet first except me. The old one: now you have both.

I flew that night. Not leaning. Up, the way you lift your hand. A thousand feet, the canyon a red line, faster than the egg or Sesh or the hull I flew north to Luna's ice outpost, holding the air round me like a coat closed against wind. Round the whole Hand in less than a breath. The first queen: you are very fast; I would like to see you do it again.

The knuckle. May I? It is part of me. Gently. I held it like three bowls and lifted, and the whole Hand rose a few feet. Not heavy: a very full cup. I kept waiting for the edge, the bucket, the spoon. It never came. "You are holding all of me. Nobody has held me before. They built a Hand round me. That is not the same." I put her down exactly. Thank you.

Everyone on the glass looking up. Garnet: can you teach me? Genny didn't ask; Genny never asks. I felt both of them with the new paths: Mother's paths beside Father's, stopped, like mine were. Yes. Tomorrow. Garnet made a sound like a kettle.

Dawn the Hand left. Okafor: Windsor, report. "Ready." A short stair; the palm a few hundred feet up. The General. Luna with Sera's scarf. Liam in a sling; Anja kissed him on the top step. Toby; Wren said something and he laughed. Hana. Sigmund turned, looked at Risa a long time, lifted his hand. Sesh and the winged Kethri carrying the three without wings, the youngest queen on Sesh's back. Marlo and Jessa: the watchers talk to Quint, and his sister would go anyway, so she's on the list. Two thousand light-benders in the second finger, going to help for the first time. Luna turned at the top. Dory: "Lu." She lifted her hand. The stair melted to mist behind her. The Hand rose past where the stars stop and was gone.

Sera didn't cry. "Twenty weeks. She'll be back." Then she walked home very fast and I heard her through the window, all at once, like a dam. Garnet, wet-faced: is it still tomorrow? It's today.

On the glass where Luna's stair began. Don't think about lifting; think about holding a cup so full it spills if you tip it. Now hold yourself like that. Garnet: she held me once when I fell off the kitchen table; I didn't hit the floor; I thought I'd imagined it. And she came off the glass, an inch, two. Genny seized, ten feet up and down on her knees. Again. Again. I didn't help; she'd have hated it. Garnet floated in circles laughing. The eleventh try she stood still and listened first, the way the queen taught her, and came up an inch exactly. Her face crumpled and she put it back. "Thank you. That helps."

Evening at the wall. Garnet floated all the way there, Pell beside her saying Garnet, Garnet, Garnet, trying not to be proud. The old one: they have both paths, like you, not finished. The framework is all there, waiting. We could finish them: a living share of silver from me, from the one at the wall, from the first one before she's too far. Like you: every path open, both gifts, no pain, no limit, silver in their eyes and hair and on their arms. They're children. So were you in the program, and so is the one on Risa's hip. We will not do it without asking them, and your mother.

Garnet came down onto both feet: yes, please. Genny: will it hurt? No. Will I be different? Yes, but you'll still be you. Father asked every day why must I climb and nobody answered. If I say yes I never climb and never grab; I just can. Then yes. But I want Mother to say it too.

Dawn, the hello thinner with the Hand going. Dory put both of them in the net and Mother came through to them: oh, look at you both. Garnet cried. Genny held out her hands palms up, the way Sera and Liam held theirs out for Rory. Do you want it? Yes. Yes. Then yes, with my love, and your father's. Lucas: hold their hands while they do it.