Chapter 303 The Question

Dot told Okafor at dawn.

After the count. The way she'd said she would. She stood at the edge of the red glass when the hello had gone down and the names had all been said, and opened the small soft door in her side, and showed Okafor the ninth. Humming, louder than it ever had, toward the end of the longest line on Garnet's map.

Okafor listened to all of it without saying anything.

Then she took the map out of her breast pocket. Unfolded it. Eight circles, crossed out. And the ninth line. Going out from the middle, past all the others, nearly off the edge of the page.

She looked at it for a long time.

"Where the keepers come from," she said.

"She is not sure," said Dot. "She has forgotten almost everything."

"But she remembers the voice."

"Yes."

Okafor folded the map. Twice. And put it back over her heart.

"Then that's where it ends," she said. Very quietly. To nobody in particular. "Not yet. Not for a long time." She looked out at the plain. At the three ships lying on it now, the Open Hand and the Steady and the long dark Scarecrow with its four fins like arms. "But that's where it ends."

She turned to go. Then stopped.

"Dot."

"Major."

"You waited till after the count."

"Operator asked this unit to let you have one night," said Dot, "where you were not looking at a map."

Okafor didn't say anything for a moment.

"Tell him thank you," she said. And went down the street.

Hana came to find Risa that afternoon.

I didn't know about it. Not then. Nobody did, except Risa, and Risa didn't say anything about it until much later, at our kitchen table, with the three of them sitting across from me and their faces doing something I'd never seen all three of them do at once.

But I've had it told to me since. By Risa, and by Hana. More than once. So I'll set it down the way they told it.

It was at the horses.

They lived in the long low barn Gareth had built at the edge of the park, past the orchards, where the gardener's grass ran down to the seventh lake. Hana went every afternoon. She said she'd waited her whole life to see a horse and she wasn't going to miss a single day of it now. She'd learned to brush Bess, and lift her great hairy feet, and lead her down to the lake to drink. The old woman from the horse family said she had good hands. Hana said that was the first time anybody had ever said that about anything she did except carry water.

Risa found her there, brushing Bess, with her face very still and her hands moving very slowly over the same patch of brown and white hair, over and over, the way you do when you're not thinking about the brushing at all.

"Hana?"

Hana didn't look round.

"You said you wanted to talk," said Risa. "At dawn. You said after the horses." She came and leaned on the half-door of the stall. "So I've come to the horses."

Hana put the brush down.

She didn't say anything for a long time.

That was Hana. She'd always been careful with words. Even before the bleed, Risa said, when they were roommates in the dome and Hana floated water spheres in the cistern and hid her nosebleeds for seven weeks because her family needed the stipend. And after, when the words came back one at a time and some of them wrong. She'd learned to wait until she had exactly the right ones.

She waited a long time now.

"Risa," she said at last. "Can I ask you something. And you won't be angry."

"I'm never angry with you."

"You were angry with me in the dome. When I hid the bleeds."

"That was different," said Risa. "That was me being frightened. I'm not frightened now." She looked at Hana. "Ask."

Hana looked down at the brush in her hands.

"I think," she said. Very slowly. Every word right. "I think I've fallen in love with Lucas."

Risa told me she didn't say anything at all for a moment.

She said she'd thought, afterward, that she should have been surprised. Or upset. Or something. And she'd waited to feel it, standing there leaning on the half-door of Bess's stall, and it hadn't come.

What came instead was: of course.

"Since when?" she said.

"I don't know," said Hana. "A long time. Since the cistern, maybe. When he had his hands on my head and was trying to drain the blood out from behind my eyes, and he didn't know how, and he was so frightened, and he did it anyway." She turned the brush over in her hands. "Or the letters. He wrote back. Every one. Even the ones that said moon when I meant spoon. He never corrected them. He just wrote back." She swallowed. "Or the forest. When he went up into the Hand on his own, after the fire, and I was on the ice with Liam, and I couldn't see him, and I didn't breathe the whole time."

She looked up.

"I don't know when," she said. "I just know it is."

"Hana," said Risa.

"I know," said Hana. Very fast, for her. "I know he's married. I know he's married to you. And Sera. And Luna. I was there. I was under the tree." Her face had gone very red. "I'm not asking for anything. I'm not going to say anything. To him. Ever. I just—" She stopped. "I couldn't not say it to someone. It was too big. And you're my friend. You did the horse voices." Her voice cracked on the last word. "I'm sorry."

Risa didn't say anything.

She opened the half-door of the stall. And came in. Past Bess, who turned her great head to look at her, very patiently, the way she looked at everything. And put her arms round Hana.

"Don't be sorry," she said.

"I'm in love with your husband—"

"You're not married to anybody," said Risa. "You've fallen in love with somebody. It happens. It happened to me. He's gorgeous, and tall and strong and kind. He has everything any woman could want in a man. It." A pause. "It happened to me with three people, Hana. All at once. In a camp in the rain. I know what it feels like."

Hana put her face against Risa's shoulder.

"What do I do?" she said.

Risa held her for a long time.

"Come with me," she said.

She took her to the house.

Not to me. I was in the forge, with Liam, mending the hinge on the Scarecrow's forward hatch that Gareth said wasn't quite true. Risa told me later she'd thought about coming to the forge, and decided not to.

She took her to Sera and Luna.

They were in the kitchen. Sera at the stove, with Ash on the floor at her feet trying to turn a wooden spoon into glass and getting halfway. Luna at the table with her notebook, and Trevor asleep in his sling against her chest, with frost very faintly on the wood where his small hand lay.

Risa came in with Hana behind her.

Sera looked up. Luna looked up.

They both looked at Hana's face. Red. Wet. Very still.

And then at Risa's.

"Sit down," said Risa. To Hana.

Hana sat down.

"Tell them," said Risa. "What you told me."

Hana told them.

Every word right. The way she said everything. The cistern, and the letters, and the forest. I just know it is.

When she'd finished, nobody said anything.

Sera turned round from the stove. Slowly. With the spoon still in her hand. She looked at Hana for a long time.

Luna closed her notebook. Square with the edge.

"Hana," she said.

"I'm sorry," said Hana. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean—I'm not asking for—"

"Hana," said Luna again. "Stop apologising."

Hana stopped.

Luna looked at her. With the face she used across a map, working out where everything went.

"Do you love us?" she said.

Hana stared at her.

"Not like him," said Luna. "I don't mean like him. I mean: do you love us? Risa. Sera. Me. The way you love your friends. The way you love your family." She paused. "Would you want to be in a house with us? With the children? Every morning?"

Hana didn't answer straight away.

She looked at Risa, beside her. At Sera, at the stove, with the spoon. At Luna, across the table, with the baby asleep against her chest. At Ash on the floor, who'd stopped trying to change the spoon and was looking up at her with silver-ringed eyes and enormous interest.

"Yes," said Hana. Very quietly. "I've loved you since the dome. All three. Risa did the horse voices. Sera sat up with me the night before Lucas finished me, and didn't make me talk. Luna opened my first letter, in the case, and saw it was for Risa, and didn't read it. She gave it straight to her." Her voice cracked. "The General told me. Before I came. He said his daughter didn't read it. He said Windsors don't read other people's letters."

Luna's face did the thing it did.

The three of them looked at each other.

Hana said afterward it was the strangest thing she'd ever seen. Like watching people talk without saying anything. Risa looked at Sera. Sera looked at Luna. Luna looked at Risa. And something went between them, round and round, three times, the way something went between the twins that nobody else ever caught.

Then Sera put the spoon down.

"Right," she said.

I came home at dusk.

With Liam. He'd come for supper, because Anja was at the Calders' with Rory the second, and Liam said he'd rather eat Sera's cooking than Maura's lecture about his son setting fire to the bread bin.

The kitchen was very quiet when we came in.

Too quiet. Liam noticed before I did. He stopped in the doorway with his hand on the frame and looked at the four women at the kitchen table, and then at me, and then said, very quickly, "I'll eat at Mum's," and was gone before I could say anything.

I looked at the table.

Sera. Risa. Luna. And Hana, at the end, very straight, with her hands in her lap and her face very red.

"What's happened?" I said. "Is it Okafor? Is it the ninth? Is—"

"Nothing's happened," said Sera.

"Sit down," said Luna.

I sat down.

They didn't look at Hana.

That was the thing I noticed. All three of them were looking at me. Very steadily. Very seriously. The way they'd looked at me in the forge the night they came in holding hands and Luna opened her notebook and said a long time ago, before we had a porch.

Hana was looking at her hands.

"Lucas," said Risa. "We want to ask you something."

"All right."

"And we want you to answer it," said Sera. "Not ask questions. Not work out what's behind it. Not look at anyone. Just answer it."

I looked at them.

"All right," I said.

Luna opened her notebook.

Of course she did.

"A long time ago," said Luna, "on a wall in the rain, we made some rules."

"I remember."

"No pretending. Wanting isn't a deadline. Say when it hurts." She looked down at the page. "And then, under the tree, we added one. Nobody here is smaller than anybody else. Your mother wrote it."

"Yes."

Luna closed the notebook. She didn't need it. She'd only opened it because that was how Luna started things.

"If the three of us were all right with it," she said. "All three. Not one. Not two. All of us." She looked at me very steadily. "Would you consider taking another wife?"

I didn't say anything.

I looked at Luna. At Sera. At Risa.

Then, without meaning to, at the end of the table.

"Don't," said Sera. Sharply. "Don't look. You said you wouldn't. Answer the question."

I looked back at her.

"Who?" I said.

"Answer the question," said all three of them. At once.

I sat there for a long time.

Long enough that Hana, at the end of the table, very slowly, put both her hands over her face.

I thought about the wall in the rain. About the three of them coming into the forge holding hands. If you'd asked, it would have been three yeses to you. And it isn't that. It's never been that.

About Mother's line, under the terms, in her careful rounded hand.

Nobody here is smaller than anybody else.

About the house we'd drawn on a scrap of paper on a wet wall, with one shared room in it and a small room for a baby, that we'd built, and that was too small now, for four and three children and a grandmother who came every morning, and that we'd been talking about making bigger for months and never had.

"Yes," I said. "I suppose. If you three are all right with it."

Nobody said anything.

Then Risa let out a breath. Very long. As if she'd been holding it since the stall.

Sera turned back to the stove. Very quickly. So I wouldn't see her face. I saw it anyway, in the dark glass of the window over the stove. She was smiling.

Luna opened her notebook. And wrote something in it. One line. And closed it again.

And Hana, at the end of the table, took her hands away from her face.

I looked at her.

I hadn't, until then. Not properly. I'd been told not to, and I hadn't. But I looked now. At Hana Osei, at the end of our kitchen table, very straight, with her water curves bright on her forearms and the silver round her eyes and her face, both sides of it, every bit of it, moving the way it should. Since I finished her. Since the morning in Edda's medical building, with Risa holding her hand.

Very red.

Looking back at me.

"Hana," I said.

"I'm sorry," said Hana.

"Don't be sorry."

"Risa said that."

"Risa's usually right."

"I know," said Hana. She swallowed. "I didn't mean to. Fall in love with you. I didn't ask to. I didn't tell anyone for a long time. I was going to not tell anyone ever." She looked at the three of them. "And then I told Risa. And she brought me here. And they asked you." Her voice was very small. "I didn't know they were going to ask you. I didn't know they were going to ask you that."

"Neither did I," I said.

"We talked about it," said Luna.

She'd put her notebook down. She was looking at Hana, not at me.

"All afternoon," she said. "The three of us. While you were in the forge." She put her hand on the notebook. "We asked ourselves the same thing we asked under the tree. Is it a thing about him? Or is it a thing in its own right?"

She looked at Hana for a long time.

"It's a thing in its own right," she said. "She loves him. She loves us too. All three. She told us so. And we—" Luna stopped. Her face did the thing it did. "We love her. Since the dome. Since before we knew we did. Risa read her the horse books. Sera sat up with her. I gave her letter away without reading it."

"Windsors don't read other people's letters," said Hana. Very quietly.

"I didn't think you'd ever know that," said Luna.

"Your father told me," said Hana. "Before I came."

Risa leaned forward.

"We're not asking you to decide anything tonight," she said. To me. "Or her. Or anyone. We're asking because she told me, and I didn't want her carrying it on her own. Not for years. Not the way she carried the bleeds." She looked at Hana. "She's carried enough things on her own."

"You have carried enough for other people," said Hana. Very softly. "Carry this one for yourself." She looked at me. "My father said that. When you asked if you could finish me."

"I remember," I said. "You wrote it in the letter."

"I didn't think it meant this."

"Neither did he, probably," said Sera, from the stove. Not turning round. "Fathers never do."

That was all, that night.

Nobody decided anything. Nobody said yes or no or when. Luna said that was the point. She said we'd all had wanting isn't a deadline for a long time, and it was still true. She said Hana could take as long as she liked, and so could I, and so could all of us, and if it turned out to be a thing that didn't want to happen after all, that was allowed too.

"No pretending," said Luna. "That's the first rule. If any of us finds out we don't want it, we say so."

"Say when it hurts," said Risa.

"Wanting isn't a deadline," said Sera.

"And nobody here," said Luna, "is smaller than anybody else."

Hana stayed for supper.

Sera made enough. She always made enough. Ash sat on Hana's knee and tried to turn her spoon into glass and got all the way this time, and held it up, and said pretty, very firmly. Dory came in from the garden with Mother and Pebble and the old brown dog, and checked everyone, one after another, the way she always did.

There you are. There you are. There you are.

She got to Hana.

She stopped.

She looked at Hana for a long time. With the lattice round her eyes like frost.

Then she climbed up onto the bench beside her. And put her small hand on Hana's arm. On the water curves, bright on her forearm.

"There you are," said Dory. Out loud.

And then, very seriously, the way she said everything:

"You're new."

Mother looked at Hana across the table.

Then at me.

Then at the three of them. Sera at the stove. Risa beside Hana. Luna at the end with Trevor asleep against her chest.

She didn't say anything. She didn't need to.

She just reached across the table, and put her hand on Hana's. Very still. Perfectly still.

Hana looked at her.

"Mrs. Dask," she said.

"Dorothy," said Mother.

I walked her home after.

Down the street, past the forge and the square and the green door of Thorne's shop, dark now, to the edge of the city where the Oseis had built their house with a pond in the yard that Kwame kept moving so it never went still. It was late. The Nivi were ringing faintly on their mountain. The Scarecrow lay long and dark on the plain, with its single light at the heart where the Drenn queen stood with her door open.

Neither of us said anything for most of the way.

At her gate, Hana stopped.

"You don't have to," she said. "Anything. Ever. I meant that. In the stall. I'd have been all right."

"I know you would."

"I've been all right on my own before."

"I know," I said. "That's what Risa doesn't want."

Hana looked at the pond in the yard. At the water, turning very slowly in the dark, the way her father kept it.

"Did you ever think about it?" she said. "Me. Like that."

I didn't answer straight away. Luna's first rule. No pretending.

"No," I said. "I didn't let myself. I had three people I loved more than I knew what to do with, and a war, and a city. I didn't look up." I looked at her. "I've been looking up all evening."

Hana didn't say anything.

"I don't know yet," I said. "That's the truth. But I'd like to find out. If you would."

The left side of her mouth moved. Then the right side. Both together, the way they did now.

"I'd like that," said Hana. Very carefully. Every word right.

Then she went in. And the pond in the yard, which her father kept moving so it never went still, went very still for a moment. Just one.

And then moved again.

Days 1703–1710. The question.

Dot told Okafor at dawn, after the count, as she said she would: the ninth humming louder toward the end of the longest line, where the voice like the keeper's comes from. Okafor unfolded the map, eight circles out, the ninth line nearly off the page. Where the keepers come from. Then that's where it ends. Not yet, not for a long time; but that's where it ends. The three ships on the plain. You waited till after the count. Operator asked this unit to let you have one night not looking at a map. Tell him thank you.

That afternoon, which I've had told me since by Risa and Hana both. Gareth's long low barn past the orchards where the grass runs down to the seventh lake. Hana goes every afternoon; she's learned to brush Bess and lift her hairy feet and lead her down to drink; the old woman says she has good hands, the first time anyone's said so about anything but carrying water. Risa found her brushing the same patch over and over. You said after the horses. Can I ask you something and you won't be angry. You were angry in the dome about the bleeds. That was being frightened; I'm not now; ask. Every word right: I think I've fallen in love with Lucas.

Risa waited to feel surprised or upset and what came was of course. Since when? A long time. The cistern, his hands on my head, so frightened and doing it anyway. The letters; he wrote back every one, even the ones that said moon for spoon, and never corrected them. The forest, when he went up into the Hand alone and I was on the ice with Liam and didn't breathe the whole time. I don't know when; I just know it is. I know he's married, to you and Sera and Luna; I was under the tree. I'm not asking for anything; I'll never say it to him; it was too big not to tell someone, and you did the horse voices. I'm sorry. Risa went into the stall past Bess and held her. You're not married to anybody; you've fallen in love; it happened to me with three people at once in a camp in the rain. What do I do? Come with me.

Not to me in the forge; to Sera and Luna in the kitchen, Ash on the floor getting a spoon halfway to glass, Trevor asleep against Luna with frost on the wood. Tell them. She did. Luna: stop apologising. Do you love us? Not like him; like friends and family; would you want to be in a house with us and the children every morning? I've loved you since the dome, all three. Risa did the horse voices; Sera sat up with me the night before Lucas finished me and didn't make me talk; Luna opened my first letter, saw it was for Risa, and gave it to her unread; the General told me Windsors don't read other people's letters. The three looked at each other round and round like the twins. Sera put the spoon down: right.

I came home at dusk with Liam, who looked at the four of them and said I'll eat at Mum's and was gone. Nothing's happened. Sit down. They looked only at me, not at Hana, as they did in the forge the night of the rings. Answer it; don't ask or work out what's behind it or look at anyone. Luna opened her notebook: the wall in the rain, the three rules, and under the tree the fourth in Mother's hand, nobody here is smaller than anybody else. If the three of us were all right with it, all three, would you consider taking another wife? I looked down the table without meaning to. Don't look. Answer the question. Who? Answer the question, all three at once. Hana put her hands over her face. I thought of the wall, the forge, three yeses that weren't to me, Mother's line, the house we drew too small now. Yes. I suppose. If you three are all right with it.

Risa let out the breath she'd held since the stall. Sera turned to the stove fast; in the dark window she was smiling. Luna wrote one line and closed the book. Hana took her hands away. I looked at her properly: water curves bright, silver round her eyes, both sides of her face moving the way they should since I finished her, very red. I'm sorry. Don't be. Risa said that. Risa's usually right. I didn't mean to or ask to; I was going to tell no one ever; I didn't know they'd ask you that. Neither did I. Luna: we asked ourselves what we asked under the tree, a thing about him or a thing in its own right? In its own right. She loves him and us, and we love her, since before we knew. Windsors don't read other people's letters. Your father told me.

Risa: we're not asking anyone to decide tonight; she told me and I didn't want her carrying it alone for years like the bleeds. Hana: you have carried enough for other people; carry this one for yourself; my father said it when you asked to finish me. You wrote it in the letter. I didn't think it meant this. Sera, not turning: fathers never do. Nothing decided. Wanting isn't a deadline; if it turns out not to want to happen, that's allowed. No pretending. Say when it hurts. Wanting isn't a deadline. Nobody here is smaller than anybody else.

Hana stayed for supper; Sera always makes enough. Ash on her knee got the spoon all the way to glass: pretty. Dory came in with Mother, Pebble and the old brown dog and checked everyone and stopped at Hana a long time, climbed up beside her, hand on the water curves: there you are. Then, very seriously: you're new. Mother looked at Hana, at me, at the three of them, said nothing, and put her hand on Hana's, perfectly still. Mrs. Dask. Dorothy. I walked her home past Thorne's dark green door to the Oseis' gate and the pond Kwame keeps moving. You don't have to; I'd have been all right on my own. That's what Risa doesn't want. Did you ever think about it? No pretending: no; I didn't let myself; three people, a war, a city; I didn't look up. I've been looking up all evening. I don't know yet; I'd like to find out, if you would. Both sides of her mouth together: I'd like that. The pond went still for one moment, and moved again.