Chapter 294 Nine

Sera was waiting at the foot of the ramp.

With Ash on her hip, and her jaw set, and her eyes on her brother. She didn't look at me. She didn't look at Okafor, or the youngest queen, or the three Kethri walking across the glass to the ring. She looked at Liam, coming down the ramp of the Open Hand in a borrowed coat with nothing under it, with the silver lines on his bare forearms still brighter than they'd ever been.

She'd felt it. Of course she had. Through the hello, through Toby carrying it, through Dory. Eleven light-years and forty minutes away, standing on the red glass with Ash asleep against her chest, she'd felt her brother run into a burning forest and put it back.

Liam stopped at the bottom of the ramp.

"Sera," he said.

She didn't say anything.

"I put it back," said Liam. "All of it. A whole forest. I—"

"I know," said Sera.

"You did it first. With the horseshoes. I know you did. I'm not saying I—"

"Liam," said Sera.

He stopped.

She shifted Ash to her other hip. Then she reached out with her free hand and put it flat on his chest, over his heart, where the borrowed coat didn't close. The way she'd put it on a piece of iron in the forge to feel if it was cool enough to hold.

"You're still warm," she said.

"I threw it up. Lucas said to. Above the clouds. It made a sun."

"I know," said Sera. "I felt that too." Her jaw was very tight. Then it wasn't. "Show-off."

And she put her forehead against his shoulder.

He put his arms round both of them. Her, and Ash, who'd woken up and was looking at her uncle's glowing forearms with enormous interest.

"Annoyed," said Liam, into Sera's hair. "And proud."

"Shut up," said Sera.

Dot was the one who noticed.

Three days after we came home. At the kitchen table, in the evening, with Genny doing chemistry at one end and Garnet drawing at the other and Mother by the stove with Dory asleep on her lap. Dot was by the door, where she always was, with her grille dim and her hands folded.

And then she wasn't.

All of her hands moved at once. Toward her side. Toward the small door there, the one I'd never seen until the night on the tender, grown while I wasn't looking. The second kind of door. Soft. Lined with her own rivers of light.

"Operator," she said.

I looked up.

"The nine," said Dot. "They have changed."

She'd kept them since the tender.

Nine pieces of queens nobody knew. Out of the pillar of slivers where the wardens had pressed hundreds of pieces together like wet clay until there was room for nothing but one note. Most of the pieces had answered when Genny asked. Most of them had wanted something. To go home. To be together. To be somewhere warm.

Nine hadn't.

They'd been pressed into the pillar so long they'd forgotten how to want. They didn't turn for any song. They didn't answer when Genny asked. They just hummed, very faint, into each other. Into nothing.

This unit would like to keep them, Dot had said. Until they know. Somebody kept this unit until it knew.

So she had. Every day since. In the small soft cup in her side.

"They have stopped humming into each other," said Dot. "Three days ago. When we came back from the forest." A pause. "They are humming somewhere else."

"Where?"

Dot opened the small door in her side.

Genny put down her pencil.

She came round the table. Slowly. Carefully. The way she did everything. And knelt in front of Dot, and held out her hands, flat, a little way off. The way she held them over stone.

The nine pieces lay in the soft cup of Dot's side. Small and grey. No bigger than seeds.

They weren't humming into each other any more.

Each one was humming somewhere different.

"Oh," said Genny. Very quietly.

"What?" said Garnet. She'd come round the table too. She was leaning over Genny's shoulder.

"They heard it," said Genny. "The singing. In the forest. When the Kethri sang again." She tilted her head. "They were in a pillar for so long with all the others, all singing the one note, and they forgot there was anything else. And then they heard the Kethri. Through the hello. Through Dot." She swallowed. "And they remembered there was something else."

"What?"

Genny didn't answer straight away.

"Home," she said. "Each of them. Somewhere different." She held her hands a little closer. "They're humming toward it. Like the youngest queen hums toward the silver at the other end. Only they're not strong enough to pull anything. They're just—" She stopped. "Pointing."

Garnet got her drawing board.

She didn't ask anyone. She went and got it and came back and sat down on the floor beside Genny and started drawing. Not a picture. Lines. From a dot in the middle of the page, outward. One line for each piece, in the direction Genny said it was humming.

Nine lines. Going out from the middle like the spokes of a wheel. All different directions. All different lengths, because Genny said some were humming much harder than others, as if home were further away, or more urgent, or both.

At the end of each line, Garnet drew a small circle.

Then she held it up.

"That's a map," she said.

Nobody said anything.

"Nine worlds," said Garnet. "Where they came from. Where their people are. Where their collars are." She looked at me. "That's nine more ones."

Okafor came at dawn.

She stood in our kitchen with Garnet's map in her hands and looked at it for a long time. The nine lines. The nine circles.

"How sure are you?" she said.

"I'm not," said Genny. "They're very faint. They've forgotten almost everything. But they haven't forgotten which way home is." She looked at Dot. At the soft cup in her side. "I don't think you can forget that. Not even in a pillar."

"Can they be sung back?"

Genny looked at me.

"Yes," I said. "If they want to be. They didn't want anything before. That's why we didn't try."

"And now?"

I knelt beside Dot. Looked at the nine pieces in the soft cup. Listened.

They wanted something.

Very faintly. Like a voice down a long pipe. Like the youngest queen's first note toward the seed on Voss's chain. But there.

Home.

"Yes," I said. "Now they want to be."

We sang them back in the park.

On the green in the middle, where every part met every other. Where the sapling was, no taller than Garnet, with the gardener's grass soft all round it. Everyone came. Of course everyone came. People always came when something large was about to become something else.

Only this time it was nine somethings.

Dot set them down on the grass herself. One at a time. With her smallest hand, the one for Wren's book and Priya's needles. In a ring round the sapling, each one facing the direction it was humming. The way Garnet had drawn them.

Then Dory woke them.

She walked out onto the green on her own two feet, holding Mother's hand, and let go of it, and sat down in the middle of the ring beside the sapling. And turned her silver all the way out.

There you are.

And all nine pieces turned toward her.

It took all night.

Nine queens. Nine worlds. Nine different things the silver had listened to and grown to fit, a very long time ago, before any of them were pressed into a pillar on a tender behind a moon. And none of them remembered much. Genny had to ask each one, again and again, very patiently, who it had been. What its world had been like. What the silver had listened to.

And I listened to what Genny heard. And the queens of Avalon sang. All of them, more than had ever sung together before, the ones from the plain and the rim and the mountain and the lakes and the caves and the trees, and the gardener's queen in the grass under our feet. And gave.

And I grew them.

One by one. All night. On the green in the middle of the park, with Dory sitting in the middle of them and everyone on Avalon watching from the edges.

I'll set them down the way Garnet drew them afterward, at dawn, on our porch, with her tongue between her teeth.

The first was a wheel of copper wire.

That's the only way I can say it. Round, and open, and hollow, the size of a cart wheel, made of thousands of fine bright filaments all woven through each other. Light. So light the breeze across the green rolled her a little way before she found her balance. Genny said her world was all wind and dry plains, and the young rolled across them in great herds, and the queen rolled with them, and where she rolled, the grass grew.

The second was salt.

White crystal, in great square blocks, growing out of each other at angles. She sat on the grass and didn't move, and the morning light went into her and came out pink. Her world, Genny said, had been a dry sea. All white. All salt. And her young had lived in the cracks.

The third was soft.

Furred all over, thick and grey-brown, the size of a haystack, with small dark eyes deep in the fur and a smell like a dog that's come in out of the snow. Her world was cold. Not like the Nivi's, all ice and stars. Cold and wide and flat and grassy, with snow half the year. The young huddled against her in the winters, the way the Sef huddled under the beam.

Pip, who'd come with Liam to watch, went straight up to her and buried both her hands in the fur and said she's like Biscuit. The furred queen made a low sound. Juno said it was the closest thing a queen had to a laugh.

The fourth was a moth.

Enormous. With wings as wide as our house, folded, dusty grey on the top and on the underneath, when she opened them, eyes. Great round false eyes, gold and black, staring. Her world had no day, Genny said. It went round its sun so slowly that one side was always dark. Her young lived in the dark side and only came to the edge of the light at the turning. The eyes were for frightening things away.

She didn't need them on Avalon. She folded her wings, so the eyes were hidden, and sat very still on the edge of the green in the morning, and looked at the sun as if she'd never seen it before.

Maybe she hadn't.

The fifth was coral.

Branching, and many-coloured, and hard, and full of holes, like the inside of a sponge or the inside of a bone. She lay on the grass and you could see that she needed to be wet. So Hana brought water up through the green, from the nearest of the seven lakes, and made a pool, and the coral queen sat in it, and the water ran through every hole in her. Her world was all reef, Genny said. Shallow. Warm. Full of things.

The sixth was heavy.

That was the first thing anyone noticed. She was small, no bigger than a kitchen table, low and round and grey like a stone. But when she came back, the grass under her pressed flat. All of it. In a circle. As if something very much bigger was sitting on it.

Genny said her world was very big. Much bigger than Avalon, or Earth. So big that everything on it weighed ten times what it should. So the silver had grown her small and dense and slow, and her young were the same. Like stones that walked.

On Avalon she weighed almost nothing, for her. She lifted one stubby foot. Then another. Then, very slowly, she began to walk round the edge of the green, and you could see her getting faster and faster, as if she couldn't believe how easy it was.

Okafor watched her go round three times.

"I know how she feels," she said.

The seventh was a bladder.

A great translucent bag of something, the size of the Ulu queen, floating. Not on water. On air. Hanging three feet off the grass, swaying, with long trailing tendrils underneath like the strings of a kite. Her world wasn't a world at all, Genny said. It was the moon of something huge and made of gas, and the air was so thick you could swim in it, and her young had floated in great drifting clouds through it.

She didn't come down. She hung over the green in the morning breeze, turning slowly, catching the light.

Garnet said she was the most beautiful thing she'd ever drawn. Then she looked at the eighth and changed her mind.

The eighth was a heron.

Or nearly. Tall and thin and grey-blue, with long legs folded like the legs of a wading bird, and a long neck, and a long narrow head. Standing very still on one leg on the edge of Hana's coral pool, looking down into the water. Her world was marsh, Genny said. All of it. Reeds and mud and shallow water and mist. Her young had waded.

She stood on one leg on the edge of the green, very still, for the whole of the morning.

Every child in the park came and stood on one leg beside her.

Nobody told them to.

The ninth didn't come back.

I tried. We all did. The queens sang and gave and Genny asked, over and over, very patiently, and I listened for anything. Any shape. Any world.

There wasn't one.

She'd been in the pillar too long. Pressed too hard. The piece of her that remembered what she'd been was gone. All that was left was the one thing she'd held on to when everything else went.

The direction.

She knew which way home was. She didn't know what home was.

Genny held her.

The ninth. A small grey piece, no bigger than a seed, in her cupped hands. Humming, very faint, toward somewhere none of us knew.

"She doesn't remember," said Genny. Very quietly. "She doesn't remember what she was. Or what her people were. Or what they looked like, or what the silver listened to." She swallowed. "She just knows which way."

"Then we'll go that way," said Garnet. Fiercely. From the porch steps, where she'd sat down with her drawing board. "We'll go that way and find out. And when we get there, she'll remember." She looked at Okafor. "Won't she?"

Okafor didn't answer straight away.

She looked at Garnet's map. At the ninth line, going out from the middle. Longer than any of the others. Much longer. Off the edge of the page, nearly.

"That's a long way," said Okafor.

"So?" said Garnet.

Okafor looked at her for a long time.

Then she took the map. And folded it. Carefully. Twice. And put it in the breast pocket of her coat, over her heart, where she'd kept the recovery order she folded twice the day the men from Central Allocation came up her stairs.

"So we'll go," said Okafor. "Eventually."

Dot took the ninth back.

Into the soft cup in her side. Alone, now. Humming toward somewhere nobody knew.

"This unit will keep her," said Dot, "until she knows."

"She might not know for a long time," I said.

"Somebody kept this unit," said Dot, "for a long time." A pause. "It was worth it."

Okafor didn't wait for eventually.

She had eight worlds on a folded map in her breast pocket and eight queens on the green who knew exactly what they'd been and exactly which way home was. That evening she stood in the map room with Luna and Keir and Aster and the youngest queen on Sesh's shoulder, and she put her finger on the shortest line.

"The wheel," she said. "The copper one. Plains and wind. She says she can feel her young from here, very faint, still rolling." She looked at Keir. "How long?"

Keir looked at Aster.

"Further than the Kethri," said Aster. "Not much. This unit estimates an hour." A pause. "The youngest says she has been practising."

"She's always been practising," said Okafor.

"One ship," said Keir. "One queen to carry it. If we go to eight worlds, one at a time, with one ship, and every one takes as long as the Kethri—"

"Years," said Luna. Quietly. Writing it down.

"Then we need another ship," said Okafor.

Keir didn't say anything. He looked at Aster. Aster's lamps went very slightly brighter.

"There is an old Hand," said Aster, "hanging empty over a forest. With nothing in it. The queen who was in it is on the forest floor between the roots of a tree, listening." A pause. "This unit could ask her if she minds."

Okafor looked at the youngest queen.

"Would she?"

The youngest queen considered this with great seriousness. Then she sang, very small and very precise, through Juno.

"She says," said Juno, "the old one won't mind. She says the old one never liked it anyway."

Okafor nodded once.

"Then that's the next thing," she said. "Grey from the old Hand. A second ship. And a queen who'd like to carry it." She looked out of the map room window. At the green in the park, in the dusk, where eight queens were still sitting where they'd come back, looking at the sky. "I don't think we'll have to look far."

Anja's baby came in the spring.

Not the spring Edda had said. Earlier. Edda had stopped being surprised by that. She said so. She said she'd started a new page in her green book headed things I'm no longer surprised by, and it was already three pages long.

It was a boy.

He came at night, in the Calder house on the edge of the square, with Maura at Anja's head and Edda at her feet and Liam pacing up and down the kitchen outside so loudly that Rory finally put a hand on his shoulder and sat him down and said steady in the voice he used on the furnace.

It worked. It always worked.

And when the baby came, with a cry so loud it rattled the windows, the first thing he did was set fire to the blanket.

Not much. A corner. A small bright flame, curling up from where his fist was clenched in the wool.

Edda didn't even flinch. She just said of course and reached for the water.

She didn't need it.

Because Liam was through the door before she'd finished reaching. And he put his hand over his son's small furious fist, very gently, the way you'd cover a candle.

And the flame went into him.

Just like that. Out of the blanket, out of the small fist, into Liam's palm. Gone.

The baby stopped crying. He looked up at his father's hand over his. At the silver lines on Liam's forearm, still brighter than they'd been before the forest.

And he opened his fist.

Anja laughed.

She was lying back against Maura with her hair stuck to her face and her ankle, the one that had been folded wrong under her for the whole of a winter alone at F-22, stretched out straight on the bed. And she laughed. Out loud. The way I'd heard her laugh only once before, at the forge, the night they told me.

"You said," she said to me. I was in the doorway. I didn't remember coming. "In the forge. You said, then you're going to have a baby that sets fire to things."

"I did."

"You were right."

"I know," I said. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry," said Anja. "Look at him."

Rory looked at him.

He'd come in behind Liam. He stood at the end of the bed, very big, very still, with his own fire held in so tight that I couldn't feel it at all, and looked down at his grandson.

"What's his name?" he said.

Liam looked at Anja.

Anja looked at Rory.

"We thought," said Anja, "if you didn't mind—"

Rory went very still.

"I stood behind Maura at a gate in the snow," said Rory. Very low. "With my son in her coat. And couldn't do one thing." He looked at the baby. At the small fist, open now, lying on the blanket with the burned corner. "And now my son's son sets fire to his blanket the first minute he's alive, and my son puts it back with one hand, like it's nothing." His voice cracked. "And you want to give him my name?"

"Yes," said Liam.

Rory didn't say anything for a long time.

Then he reached down. And put his big hand on the baby's head. Very gently.

"Steady," he said.

The baby, very seriously, looked up at him.

And his small fist closed round Rory's finger.

Wren wrote it in the back of her book.

Calder, Rory. With a small mark beside it, the way she marked the second of a name. The second.

Under Marsh, Harriet. Under Dask, Ash. Under everyone.

The page was getting full. She said she'd have to start another one soon.

She said she didn't mind.

Days 1020–1074. Nine.

Sera at the foot of the ramp with Ash, eyes only on Liam in a borrowed coat with his forearms still too bright. I put it back. You did it first. Liam. Her flat hand on his chest like testing iron: you're still warm. I threw it up; it made a sun. I felt that too. Show-off. Forehead on his shoulder; his arms round her and Ash, who stared at his glowing arms. Annoyed and proud. Shut up.

Three evenings later every one of Dot's hands went to the small soft door in her side grown while I wasn't looking: the nine have changed. Kept since the tender, the ones that wanted nothing, humming only into each other; until they know, somebody kept this unit until it knew. Three days ago, home from the forest, they stopped humming into each other and started humming somewhere else. Genny knelt with her hands flat: they heard the Kethri sing through the hello and Dot, and remembered there was something besides the one note. Home, each somewhere different; not strong enough to pull, just pointing. Garnet drew nine lines from a dot like spokes, lengths for how hard each hums, a circle at each end: that's a map. Nine worlds, their people, their collars. That's nine more ones.

Okafor at dawn with the map. How sure? Not; they've forgotten almost everything but not which way home is; I don't think you can forget that, even in a pillar. Can they be sung back? If they want. They didn't before. I listened in Dot's cup: faint as the first note toward Voss's seed. Home. Now they want to be.

The green in the park by the sapling, everyone watching. Dot set them in a ring with her smallest hand, each facing where it hums. Dory let go of Mother's hand, sat in the middle and turned all the way out; all nine turned to her. All night: Genny asking each again and again who it had been, every queen on Avalon singing and giving, the gardener's queen in the grass, and I grew them.

Garnet drew them at dawn. A wheel of fine copper wire the size of a cart wheel, so light the breeze rolled her: a windy dry-plains world where herds of young rolled and grass grew where she rolled. Salt in square crystal blocks, light going in white and out pink: a dry white sea, young in the cracks. A furred grey-brown haystack smelling of a dog in from the snow: a cold grassy world, young huddled against her in winters; Pip buried her hands in her and said she's like Biscuit; Juno says her low sound is the nearest a queen gets to a laugh. A moth with wings wide as our house, dusty grey, gold-and-black false eyes beneath: a world that turns so slowly one side is always dark; on Avalon she folded the eyes away and looked at the sun as if for the first time. Coral, many-coloured, full of holes like bone; Hana brought a lake up through the green into a pool and the water ran through her; a warm shallow reef world.

A small heavy grey stone the size of a kitchen table that flattened the grass in a circle: a world so big everything weighs ten times; on Avalon she lifted one foot, then walked round the green faster and faster as if she couldn't believe it. Okafor, after three laps: I know how she feels. A great translucent floating bag with kite-string tendrils, three feet off the grass, turning: the moon of a gas giant, air thick enough to swim in, young drifting in clouds. And a heron, nearly, grey-blue on one leg at the edge of the coral pool all morning: a marsh world of reeds and mist where her young waded. Every child in the park came and stood on one leg beside her. Nobody told them to.

The ninth didn't come back. Pressed too long; the part that remembered is gone; only the direction is left. She knows which way home is, not what home is. Garnet from the steps: then we'll go that way and find out, and when we get there she'll remember, won't she? The ninth line runs nearly off the page. That's a long way. So? Okafor folded the map twice into her breast pocket over her heart, where she keeps the recovery order from the day Central Allocation came up her stairs: so we'll go. Eventually. Dot took the ninth back into her side alone: this unit will keep her until she knows. Somebody kept this unit a long time; it was worth it.

That evening Okafor put her finger on the shortest line: the copper wheel, still feeling her young rolling. Aster: an hour; the youngest has been practising. Keir: eight worlds one at a time with one ship is years. Then another ship. Aster: an old Hand hangs empty over a forest; this unit could ask the old queen if she minds. The youngest: she won't; she never liked it anyway. Grey from the old Hand, a second ship, and a queen who'd like to carry it. Okafor looked at eight queens on the green in the dusk: I don't think we'll have to look far.

Anja's boy, early; Edda has a new page headed things I'm no longer surprised by, three pages already. Night in the Calder house; Liam pacing till Rory sat him down: steady. A cry that rattled the windows, and the first thing he did was set fire to the corner of the blanket. Edda said of course and reached for water; she didn't need it. Liam covered the small fist like a candle and the flame went into his palm, and the baby opened his fist. Anja laughed out loud, ankle straight on the bed: you said in the forge, a baby that sets fire to things; you were right. I'm sorry. Don't be; look at him. Rory: what's his name? We thought, if you didn't mind. I stood behind Maura at a gate in the snow with my son in her coat and couldn't do one thing; now his son sets fire to his blanket and my son puts it back with one hand like nothing; and you want to give him my name? Yes. His hand on the baby's head: steady. The small fist closed round his finger. Wren: Calder, Rory, the second, under Marsh, Harriet, under Dask, Ash. The page is nearly full. She doesn't mind.