Chapter 280 Home

They came down over the plain the way the first one had come, the first time. Slowly. Silently. Two of them, side by side, three fingers and a palm and three fingers and a palm, so big that their shadows covered the whole of the red glass from the canyon rim to the horizon.

Only this time nobody was afraid.

Everyone came out. Not to stand in a row with their children the way Okafor had told us to, the day the first Hand came. Just to come. Out of the houses and the forge and the schoolroom and the courts. Down the street. Onto the glass. Teeming coming up out of the hollow and along the terraces and down off the rim, so many that the canyon edge went pale with plates. The Tharn on the plain, turning slowly toward the sky. The Mirri rising over them in a grey cloud, singing like rain on a roof.

Our queen at the garden wall rose to her full height and didn't leave it. She didn't need to. She'd been holding the net with Dory for long enough. Now she just watched.

And on the glass, at the front, where we'd stood every dawn since the deep first said hello, the four of us. Three of us.

Me. Risa, with Dory on her hip. Sera, with her hand on her stomach and her chin up.

Luna's place was empty.

Not for long.

The first queen set the palm down gently.

On the plain, not far from the edge of the glass. The way she'd set the knuckle down on our plain the day she moved for the first time. So gently the glass didn't crack. Beside it, the second queen did the same, a little further out. Bigger. Slower. With a hundred young in her wrist and ten thousand Hesk in her palm who'd climbed up there on their own six legs.

Then the first finger opened.

Not a door. Not a seam. It just opened, the way a hand opens, and there was light inside it, and people.

Three hundred and six of them.

Coming out onto Avalon for the first time in their lives. Slowly. Blinking. In coats they'd worn under the dome, with bags and bundles and children, and Meg Thorne with a sack of starter in her arms like a baby and her father on her other arm, very old and very small, his clouded eyes turned up toward a light he couldn't see. Looking round. At the red glass, and the canyon, and the city, and the Teeming lining the rim in their thousands, and the sky, which was blue, and enormous, and nobody's ceiling.

Luna was at the front.

She came down the last of the palm onto the glass with her notebook under her arm and Sera's badly knitted scarf round her neck and her father one step behind her. Straight. Very straight. Looking for us.

She found us.

And didn't walk.

Sera got there first.

She'd said she'd be first, and she was. Twenty-four weeks and all. She was off the glass and across the plain before Luna had finished taking a breath, and she didn't stop, she didn't slow down, she went straight into Luna so hard that Luna's notebook went flying and the General had to step aside.

Then Risa, with Dory, who wrapped her free arm round both of them.

Then me.

I don't remember what anybody said. I don't think anybody said anything. I remember Luna's face against my shoulder, very cold, the way it always was, and Sera's hand on the back of my neck, very warm, the way it always was, and Risa's arm round all of us, and Dory, squashed in the middle, saying Lu over and over with her hand in Luna's hair.

And the General, very straight, picking up his daughter's notebook off the glass. Dusting it off. Holding it.

Not giving it back yet.

"You're back," said Sera, eventually. Into Luna's collar.

"I'm back."

"I didn't have her."

Luna pulled back. Just a little. Enough to look at her.

"You what?"

"I said I wouldn't have her until you were back," said Sera. Her chin came up. "And I didn't."

"Sera, you're twenty-four weeks. You weren't going to have her."

"That's not the point," said Sera. "The point is, I didn't."

Luna looked at her for a long time.

Then she laughed. All at once. Out loud. The way she'd laughed on the porch the night before she left, the way that was half crying.

"Calders," she said.

"Calders," Sera agreed.

Then the rest came.

All at once, the way the Kethri had broken their line in the hollow. Everyone. Off the palm and onto the glass and across the plain to whoever they'd been looking for.

Toby, with his fiddle on his back, and a very small woman beside him with her hand in his, coming straight across the glass to Wren. Who was standing at the edge of it with her book under her arm and her hand on her stomach. Who didn't run, because Wren never ran, except twice.

She ran.

Liam, with his sling off at last and Pip on his shoulders, and Rory and Maura behind him. Anja, coming out from the crowd at the edge of the glass, stopping in front of Liam, not saying anything. Liam putting Pip down. Maura stepping round her son, very deliberately, and taking Anja's face in both her hands.

With flour on them. Of course with flour on them. Maura had found flour in the first finger of a Hand that had crossed eleven light-years, and got it on her hands, so that when she met her son's girl for the first time, she'd be holding her face with flour on.

Hana with her family. Kwame Osei looking up at the canyon and the sky and the Teeming on the rim, and lifting one hand, and a mist coming up off the plain where there'd been no water at all.

Brock.

He'd been at the back of the glass. With Genny. He'd been standing very straight, the way Sigmund stood, with his arms folded and his iron-grey rings bright, not looking for anyone. Telling everyone, all morning, that he wasn't nervous.

A thin grey man came off the palm with a box under his arm.

Brock stopped telling anyone anything.

He didn't go to him.

I watched it. I couldn't not. Brock stood at the back of the glass, and the thin grey man stood at the bottom of the palm, and neither of them moved, for a long time, while everyone else on the plain ran into everyone else.

Then the thin grey man put the box down.

On the glass. At his feet. And opened it. And took out a piece of paper. Folded. Old.

He held it up.

Brock couldn't have read it from where he was standing. Nobody could. But Brock knew what it was. I saw it in his face. Fix it.

His father held it up for a long moment.

Then he tore it in half.

And in half again.

And again, and again, until it was too small to tear, and he opened his hand and let the pieces go, and the wind off the plain took them away over the red glass like ash.

He didn't say anything.

Brock crossed the glass in about four steps.

And Sigmund.

He came off the palm last of everyone from the first finger. Not alone. With Jessa beside him. Not touching. Not quite. Just walking very close, the way Toby and Wren had walked before anybody said anything, with his arms folded and his lightning held so tight it was still, and Jessa with her hands in her pockets and Marlo a step behind them both, grinning so widely it looked like it hurt.

Risa saw them.

She stopped in the middle of saying something to Luna. She looked at her brother. Then at Jessa. Then at the space between them, which was very small.

"Siggy," she said.

Sigmund looked at her.

He didn't say anything.

But he went red. All the way. Up from his collar to his hair. The way Wren had gone red on our porch the night Garnet shouted are you having a baby. I'd never seen Sigmund go red in my life. I didn't know he could.

Jessa didn't look at anyone. She looked at the glass under her feet.

But she took one hand out of her pocket.

And very carefully, without looking, she put it through Sigmund's folded arm.

And he let her.

Okafor came down just before her.

Not last. She'd said Mother would be last, and Okafor didn't change her mind about things like that. She came down the palm on her own, in a plain coat, with a slate in one hand and the other hand behind her back, the way she'd stood at the front of the mess hall in the dome on the first day and waited for the room to go quiet.

The plain didn't go quiet. Nobody on it could have stopped, not for anything. But round her, where she walked, it went a little stiller.

Miss Pell was waiting at the edge of the glass.

With Juno beside her. Juno had been at Pell's side since the Hands came over the rim, very close, the way she'd walked a little way behind Pell to the courts every day since Pell came to Avalon.

Okafor stopped in front of them.

She looked at Pell for a long moment.

"Harriet," she said.

"Maris," said Pell.

Then Okafor looked at Juno. At the silver round her eyes. At the girl Pell had hidden for as long as she could and lost to a transport anyway. The girl who'd called in as Pell on every first-wave call-in until her base went dark, and then flashed a mirror from a hilltop every dawn until someone answered.

"Cadet Pell," said Okafor.

"Ma'am," said Juno.

"North's wrong here," said Okafor. "I'm told. It moves."

Juno's face did something complicated.

"Yes, ma'am," she said. "But I always know where it is."

"Good," said Okafor.

That was all. Then she turned, and walked on, across the glass, to where Holt was standing at the edge of the crowd with his arms folded, watching her come.

I didn't hear what they said to each other. Nobody did. But the General, a little way off with Luna's notebook still in his hand, watched them for a long time, and something in his face went quiet.

Mother came last.

I'd known she would. Okafor had said so. I want her to walk down off that Hand onto the ground you made, and see what you made. All of it. At once.

So she waited.

She waited at the top of the palm while everyone else came down. While three hundred and six people came off the Hand onto Avalon and found whoever they'd been looking for. While Sera ran into Luna and Wren ran to Toby and Brock crossed the glass in four steps. She stood at the top of the palm in the light, in the blue silk dressing gown, with Father's ring on her hand and her grey streak bright and her hands perfectly still at her sides, and she waited.

And when the palm was empty except for her, she came down.

I'd felt her through the net every dawn since the first queen first held the door open. I'd been inside her silver. I'd opened every narrow place Retention had cut in her, one at a time and then all at once. I'd felt her hold three men by their buckles and twelve handlers at the bottom of a Hand. I'd reached through her hands to open shells at the north end of a ridge on the far side of eleven light-years.

I hadn't seen her.

Not since before the pods. Not without a screen. Not with my own eyes.

She came down the palm onto the red glass.

Onto the ground I'd made.

And stopped.

She didn't look at me first.

I'd thought she would. I'd been standing at the front of the glass with my hands at my sides, the way she was standing, waiting for her to look at me. Taking inventory. The way she'd looked at me across the kitchen table in the house in the dead field, when I came in from the field. Arms, legs, face. Eyes.

She didn't.

She looked at everything.

At the red glass under her feet. At the canyon, and the terraces, and the houses the queens had grown and the houses I'd made. At the forge and the schoolroom and the tree in the square. At the Teeming lining the rim in their thousands. At the Tharn on the plain and the Mirri singing over them. At the queen at the garden wall, at her full height, watching. At the sky.

All of it. At once. The way Okafor had said.

And then she looked at me.

I don't know what my face did.

Risa says it did the thing Luna's did, on the apron, when her father came down the ramp. Broke. All at once. Like ice on a river in spring.

Mother's didn't.

Mother's face did something I'd never seen it do. In all the years. In the house in the dead field, in the hospital bed in the dome, on every call home with her hands shaking at the edge of the screen.

It was still.

Not composed. Not careful. Not holding something back. Still. The way water is still when nothing is moving it. The way her hands were still. Completely. For the first time since before I was born.

She held out her arms.

I don't remember crossing the glass.

She smelled the same.

That was the thing. Everything else was different. Her hands didn't shake. Her silver was whole; I could feel it, running out to the ends of everything, bright and open and hers. She stood up straight, without leaning on anything, without a frame, without anyone's arm. She was stronger than I was, now, in some ways, and I knew it, and she knew it.

But she smelled the same. The way she'd smelled in the kitchen in the house in the dead field, when I was small, and she held me, and the bowls and the flour and the eggs hung in the air round us without spilling.

"Oh, love," she said. Into my hair. "Oh, love. Look at you."

"You're not looking."

"I'm looking with my hands." She held on tighter. "I've looked with my eyes every morning for a year. Let me look with my hands."

So I let her.

Dory was the one who stopped it.

Not on purpose. Dory didn't do anything on purpose that she didn't mean to. She was on Risa's hip, a step behind me, and she'd been very quiet since Mother came down off the palm. Very bright. Every path of her woven silver turned all the way toward my mother.

Checking.

Not the way she checked everyone. The way she'd checked the first time. The day of the call, when she went out along the thread I didn't know I'd left open and found a woman on a sofa eleven light-years away. There you are. The way she'd found her every dawn since, down the hello, and held her, and let me reach through her to open every door.

She'd never seen her.

Mother let go of me. Slowly. And turned.

And looked at Dory.

Dory looked back.

Nobody on the glass said anything. Not Risa, holding her. Not Sera, or Luna, or me. Not Genny and Garnet, who'd come up behind us without anyone noticing and were standing very still, holding hands, the way they had on the sofa in the penthouse on the call.

Then Dory reached out.

Not with her silver. With her arms. Both of them. Straight out. Toward my mother. The way Garnet used to reach for Mother when she was very small and wanted to be picked up, and Mother's hands were shaking too hard to do it.

Mother looked at Risa.

Risa didn't say anything. She just held Dory out.

And Mother took her.

I've thought about it a lot since. What happened next. I've tried to describe it to Luna, who was there, and she says I'm describing it wrong, and then she tries, and she says she's describing it wrong too.

The nearest I can get is this.

Dory had been holding the net since the dawn the Hands left Earth. Holding everyone. Every path joined to every other. Across eleven light-years and then across less and less as the Hands came closer. She'd held it while she slept. She'd held it when she was so tired she yawned with her whole face. She'd never let go once.

When Mother took her, she let go.

All of it. All at once. The whole net, everyone, every path, the way you'd put down something very heavy when someone finally comes to help you carry it.

And she put her head on my mother's shoulder.

And sighed.

And went to sleep.

Mother didn't move.

She stood on the red glass at the edge of the plain with my daughter asleep on her shoulder, and she didn't move at all. Her hands were very still on Dory's back. Perfectly still. Holding her the way she'd held three bowls and the flour and the eggs. Exactly.

"She's been holding everyone," said Risa. Very quietly. "Since the dawn you left Earth. All of you. All the way. She never put it down once."

"I know," said Mother. "I felt her."

"She's never let anyone take it off her before."

Mother looked down at the small dark head on her shoulder.

"No," she said. "I don't suppose anyone's ever offered."

Risa made a sound. Not quite a laugh.

Then she stepped forward and put her arms round both of them. Mother and Dory. Very carefully. The way you'd hold something you'd been waiting your whole life to hold.

Mother let her.

"Risa," she said.

"Mrs. Dask."

"Dot," said Mother. Firmly. "You're the mother of my granddaughter. You'll call me Dot." A pause. "Or I'll be very cross. And I've been told by everyone on this plain that I'm stronger than I used to be."

Risa laughed. Properly, this time.

"Dot," she said.

Dory slept on Mother's shoulder for the whole of the morning.

Mother didn't put her down. Not once. She walked up the street from the plain into the city with Dory asleep on her shoulder and Genny on one side of her and Garnet floating on the other. Garnet couldn't help it. Garnet floated everywhere now, and she'd decided Mother needed to see her do it, and she did it all the way up the street, two feet off the ground, talking.

"And this is the forge, Lucas made it, and this is the schoolroom, Wren teaches there, and Nessa, Nessa's the one with the bread for the Overseer, well, that was me, but Nessa started it, and that's the tree, Dov and Priya got married under it, and Toby and Wren are going to, now you're here, they said they'd wait until Toby's mum was here and now she is—"

"Garnet," said Genny.

"What? I'm showing her."

"You're showing her eleven things at once."

"Twelve," said Garnet, "if you count the tree twice."

Mother laughed.

Out loud. On the street. With Dory asleep on her shoulder.

I'd heard her laugh on the hello. I'd heard her laugh on the calls home, the edge of it, before her hands started shaking again. I hadn't heard her laugh out loud, all the way, since before Father died.

Genny looked at her.

So did Garnet. She stopped floating. She came down onto the street on both feet and looked at Mother laughing, and her face did the thing it did when something was too much for it.

Then she started crying instead.

Mother put her free arm round her.

She saw the first Teeming at the bottom of our porch steps.

I should have thought. I should have warned her. I'd been so busy watching her face as she looked at everything, the canyon and the houses and the sky, that I hadn't thought about what everything meant to someone who'd spent three years on the northern front.

It was Pebble.

Of course it was Pebble. Pebble sat at the bottom of our porch steps most mornings, on the step he'd decided was his, the way a dog decides. He'd been there when we came up the street. Waiting. With a stone in his forelimb. Smooth and round. From his hollow. The way he'd brought stones to my porch since the first year.

He'd heard. All the Teeming had heard. That the boy's mother was coming. That the one who'd held the net with Dory every dawn, who'd held the handlers' blades at the bottom of the Hand, who was Dory's grandmother, was coming home.

He'd brought her a stone.

He stood up as we came up the street. On his short legs. Unhurried. The way he did everything. And came forward, off his step, onto the street, with the stone held out in his forelimb, toward my mother.

Mother flinched.

Not much.

Nobody who didn't know her would have seen it. A small sharp movement, all through her, the way you'd flinch from a hand raised too fast. Her free arm came up. Not to strike. To hold. The way she'd held three men by their buckles in Okafor's flat. Without deciding to. Without thinking.

And everything on the street lifted.

An inch. The loose stones. The dust. Garnet's drawing board, out of Garnet's hands. The stone in Pebble's forelimb.

Pebble.

All of him. An inch off the street. Held. Exactly. Every plate. Every leg. The width of a hair.

He didn't struggle. He didn't make a sound. He hung there in the air in front of my mother with the stone still held out in his forelimb, very still, the way the young go still in the hollow when the weather turns.

Then Mother saw what she'd done.

I watched it go through her. All of it. Her face, which had been so still on the glass, went white. Her arm came down. And everything she'd lifted came down with it. Gently. Feet first. Exactly. Pebble set down on the street exactly where he'd been, with the stone still in his forelimb.

Dory didn't wake.

"Oh," said Mother. Very quietly. "Oh, no."

She knelt down.

In the street. In the blue silk dressing gown. With Dory asleep on her shoulder. She knelt down on the stones in front of Pebble, so that her face was level with his, and her free hand was shaking.

Not the old shake. Not the stabilizer. Something else.

"I'm sorry," she said. To Pebble. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to. I didn't—" Her voice broke. "You frightened me. That's not your fault. That's not anything you did. That's mine."

Pebble looked at her.

He didn't understand the words. He didn't have to. Dot was at the top of the porch steps, and she'd started translating before Mother finished the first sentence, very quietly, in the brood-speech, the way she'd translated for the General in the meeting chamber the first time.

Pebble listened.

Then, very slowly, he held out the stone again.

Mother looked at it.

She didn't take it straight away. She knelt there in the street with her hand shaking and looked at the small round smooth stone in the forelimb of the Teeming she'd just lifted off the ground without meaning to.

"I fought you," she said. Very quietly. Not to Pebble. To herself, maybe. To the street. "For three years. On the northern front. I don't know how many of you I—" She stopped. "I used to keep a count. Alaric kept one too. We all did. We used to compare." She swallowed. "And you've been bringing my son stones."

Pebble waited.

He was very good at waiting.

And my mother put out her shaking hand and took the stone.

She held it on the porch for the rest of the afternoon.

Not in her hand. Not lifting it. In her lap. With Dory, still asleep, across her knees, and the stone on the blanket beside Dory, and her hand flat on top of it.

Pebble sat on his step at the bottom of the porch the whole time.

Not close. Not far. Watching.

I sat beside her. I didn't say anything. I didn't know what to say. Risa sat on her other side, and Sera and Luna on the step below, and Genny and Garnet at the end of the porch with their backs against the wall. Nobody said anything for a long time.

Then Mother said, "The General told me."

I looked at her.

"In the first finger. On the way here. He told me about your queen. In the meeting chamber, the first time he came." Mother's hand was flat on the stone. "He told me she asked him what he'd do if someone held Luna behind a door. And he said burn the world. And she said that was what they counted on."

"Yes."

"He said she told him her sisters were the ones on the northern front. The broods that came to our cities. Held. Made to." Mother's voice was very low. "He said she told him: you were told we were monsters. We were told you were the ones who had taken our children. Neither of us looked at the door."

I didn't say anything.

"I didn't look at the door," said Mother. "Not once. Not in three years. I tore a hole in a Hand and sent your father into it, and when he came out and said there's someone in there, I didn't ask who." She looked at the stone. "I just kept counting."

"You didn't know."

"No," said Mother. "I didn't know. That's not the same as not doing it."

She went to the garden wall at dusk.

On her own. She gave Dory to Risa, finally, and Dory woke up long enough to look at her and say something that wasn't a word, cross, and then went back to sleep on Risa instead. And Mother went down the porch steps, past Pebble on his step, and down the garden, with the stone in her hand.

To the queen.

I didn't follow. It wasn't mine.

But I could hear. Not the words. The queen's voice didn't make sounds, and Mother didn't say much. But I could feel it. Through the queens' silver in me, the way I felt everything the queen said to anyone.

Mother stood at the bottom of the garden wall and looked up at the queen. At her full height. Pale plates. One great eye.

And she held out the stone.

Pebble gave me this, she said. I lifted him off the ground. I didn't mean to. I frightened him. A pause. I fought your sisters for three years.

The queen looked at her for a long time.

I know, said the queen. Your son told me. And the father of Luna told me. And Dory has been telling me, in her way, every dawn, for as long as she has been holding you.

I'd like to say I'm sorry.

It is not mine to give, said the queen. I was not on the northern front. My sisters were. Most of them are dead. A pause. I told the father of Luna the same.

Mother lowered the stone.

But, said the queen.

Mother looked up.

Pebble is mine, said the queen. And Pebble brought you a stone. Before you came. Before you flinched. Before you said you were sorry. Her plates shifted on the wall. He brought it because you are Dory's. And Dory is ours. And he did not ask what you had done before.

Mother didn't say anything.

You are not asking me for forgiveness, said the queen. You are asking me what to do with the stone.

A long pause.

Yes, said Mother. Very quietly.

Keep it, said the queen. And tomorrow, when he brings you another, keep that too.

Days 815–816. Home.

They came down slowly and silently, two Hands, shadows from the rim to the horizon, and nobody was afraid. Everyone came out, not in a row: Teeming paling the rim, the Tharn turning, the Mirri singing like rain. Our queen rose at the wall and didn't leave it. The three of us at the front of the glass. Luna's place empty, not for long.

The first queen set the palm down so gently the glass didn't crack; the second beside her with her young and the Hesk. The finger opened like a hand and three hundred and six came out blinking at a blue sky that is nobody's ceiling. Meg Thorne with the starter like a baby and her father on her arm. Luna at the front with Sera's scarf, her father a step behind, looking for us. She didn't walk. Sera, twenty-four weeks, got there first and sent her notebook flying; Risa with Dory; me. Dory saying Lu with her hand in Luna's hair. The General picked up the notebook and didn't give it back yet. "I didn't have her." "You were never going to have her yet." "That's not the point." Calders.

Toby with his fiddle and his small mother. Wren, who never runs except twice, ran. Liam with no sling and Pip on his shoulders; Maura stepped round her son and took Anja's face in both hands with flour on them. She found flour in the first finger. Kwame lifted a hand and mist came up off dry glass.

Brock at the back with Genny, telling everyone he wasn't nervous. A thin grey man came off the palm with a box, set it down, took out one old folded sheet, held it up so Brock would know it, and tore it in half, and half, and half again, and let the wind take it over the glass like ash. Brock crossed in four steps.

Sigmund last from the first finger with Jessa beside him, not touching, very close, Marlo grinning behind. Risa: Siggy. He went red to the hair; I didn't know he could. Jessa looked at her feet, took a hand out of her pocket, and put it through his folded arm. He let her.

Okafor came down just before her, slate in one hand, the other behind her back, and the plain went a little stiller round her. Harriet. Maris. Cadet Pell. Ma'am. North's wrong here, I'm told; it moves. But I always know where it is. Good. Then to Holt at the edge of the crowd; nobody heard what they said; the General watched a long time.

Mother waited at the top of the palm until it was empty, as Okafor wanted, in the blue silk dressing gown, Father's ring, the grey streak. She came down onto the ground I made and didn't look at me first. She looked at everything at once: the glass, the canyon, the houses grown and made, the forge, the schoolroom, the tree, the rim, the Tharn and Mirri, the queen at the wall, the sky. Then at me. My face broke. Hers was still, the way water is still when nothing moves it, the way her hands were. She held out her arms. She smelled the same. "Oh, love. Look at you." You're not looking. "I've looked with my eyes every morning for a year. Let me look with my hands."

Dory had never seen her. She'd found her down the thread the day of the call and held her every dawn since. Genny and Garnet came up behind us holding hands like on the sofa. Dory reached with both arms, the way Garnet used to reach when Mother's hands shook too hard to lift her. Risa held her out. When Mother took her, Dory let go of the whole net at once, like putting down something heavy when someone finally comes to help, put her head on Mother's shoulder, sighed, and slept. Risa: she's never let anyone take it off her. "I don't suppose anyone's ever offered." Risa held them both. Mrs. Dask. Dot. You'll call me Dot, or I'll be very cross, and I'm told I'm stronger than I used to be.

All morning Dory slept on her shoulder. Garnet floated up the street showing her everything, eleven things at once; twelve if you count the tree twice. Mother laughed out loud, all the way, the first time since before Father died. Garnet came down onto her feet and cried. Mother's free arm round her.

Pebble at the bottom of our steps with a stone for her, because she is Dory's and Dory is theirs. He came forward. Mother flinched, a small sharp movement, and her arm came up to hold without deciding, and everything on the street lifted an inch: stones, dust, Garnet's board, Pebble, every plate held to a hair. He hung very still like the young in bad weather. She saw what she'd done, went white, put everything down feet first. Dory didn't wake. "Oh, no."

She knelt in the street in the silk gown, Dory on her shoulder, her free hand shaking, not the old shake. I'm so sorry; you frightened me and that's not your fault, it's mine. Dot translated from the top step. Pebble held out the stone again. "I fought you. Three years, the northern front. We kept counts. Alaric too. We compared. And you've been bringing my son stones." He waited; he's very good at waiting. She took it with her shaking hand.

All afternoon on the porch, Dory across her knees, her hand flat on the stone. Pebble on his step. The General told her in the first finger about our queen in the meeting chamber: burn the world; that is what they counted on; neither of us looked at the door. "I didn't look at the door. Not once. I tore a hole in a Hand and sent your father in, and when he said there's someone in there, I didn't ask who. I just kept counting." You didn't know. "That's not the same as not doing it."

Dusk, alone, at the garden wall, holding out the stone. I lifted him without meaning to; I fought your sisters three years; I'd like to say I'm sorry. The queen: it is not mine to give; my sisters were on the northern front; most are dead; I told the father of Luna the same. But Pebble is mine, and he brought you a stone before you came, before you flinched, before you said sorry, because you are Dory's and Dory is ours, and he did not ask what you had done before. You are not asking me for forgiveness. You are asking me what to do with the stone. Yes. Keep it. And tomorrow, when he brings you another, keep that too.