Chapter 322 Rings

The small heavy child came down.

Slowly. The way the heavy young did everything. Not falling any more. Sinking. Through the brown air, past the edge of the Scarecrow's arms, toward the ash, the way a stone sinks through deep water. Its smooth grey face turned down the whole way. Toward the small old queen at the foot of the Ground's ramp, singing its name.

It landed on the ash in front of her.

Very gently. So gently the ash barely lifted.

And the heavy queen stopped singing.

She didn't need to sing any more. Her young was standing in front of her. The same size as the heavy young on Avalon who'd fallen in Bram's trench. Dense. Grey. Shaped like a stone. With silver in it so bright and so whole and so heavy that I could see it from the Scarecrow's deck, three miles up, like a lamp at the bottom of a well.

The heavy queen lowered her head.

Very slowly. A long time coming. Until it touched the top of her young's smooth grey face.

And stayed there.

Asking is not how it's done.

The voice. Faint. From very far away, down the rope behind the Hands. Pressing. The way it had pressed in the halls under the ring, every few minutes, every day.

The small heavy child flinched.

I saw it. The whole of its dense grey body jerk once, very slightly, as the voice came down. And its face started to turn. Away from its mother. Back up. Toward the Hands. Toward where the voice was coming from.

The heavy queen didn't lift her head.

She didn't sing. She didn't push. She stood there on the ash with her head resting on her young, very still, very heavy, the way a stone rests on another stone. Not holding it. Not stopping it.

Just there.

And the child's face stopped turning.

"Now," said Luna. Through the seed. Very quietly. "Every queen. Now."

And every queen sang.

The furred queen, on the Harness, to the north. The three Kethri queens on the Wing, together, on the wind. The marsh queen on the Long Legs, who hadn't said anything for a month. The Drenn queen on the Scarecrow, with her arms out over the dome. And under them, along the hello, across the dark, every queen on Avalon. Our queen at the garden wall. The first queen in the hollow. The Karst queen under the park, too frightened to cross and not too frightened to sing. The moth queen, awake in the day. The salt queen. The coral queen in her pool.

And all of it going through one small girl on the red glass eleven light-years away with her hand flat on the ground.

I'm holding, said Dory. Very faint. Through everything. I'm holding. Go on.

Names.

Every queen singing a name. Not words. Shapes. The shapes they'd made, a long time ago, on their own worlds, for their own young, the day they were born. Before the young were taken and put on a bench and taught to forget.

Up into the brown sky. Into the falling.

The children stopped.

Not all of them. Not at once. One here. Two there. High in the air under the open palm of the first Hand, falling slowly like seeds off a tree. A Kethri child, tall, with its wings folded tight under grey, suddenly spreading them. Not flying. Just spreading them. As if it had forgotten it had wings until somebody sang to it. A Drenn child, enormous, with four arms folded and blades crossed, stopping dead in the air and turning its smooth grey face toward the Scarecrow. Toward the open door in the middle of her, where a queen stood with her arms out singing its name.

A furred child. One. Very small. Stopping. Turning north. Toward the Harness.

And then the second Hand opened. And the third. And more children came out. Hundreds. Thousands. Falling. And the voice came down the rope after them, harder now, asking is not how it's done, asking is not how it's done, and some of them flinched and turned back toward it and some of them didn't.

The ones who didn't hear anything came down onto the ash.

That was the worst of it. Not the voice. Not the Hands. The ones whose queens weren't singing. Because their queens were in pillars still, somewhere, on some world we hadn't found. Or broken into pieces and sent to the human world in tokens. Or dead.

They came down onto the ash with their hands together and their smooth grey faces turned up toward the Hands. Toward the voice. Waiting. Doing what they'd been told.

And what they'd been told, I saw, when I looked inside the first of them, was very simple.

Find what called.

They turned toward the dome.

All of them. The ones who couldn't hear. Hundreds. Standing on the ash in rows, the way they'd sat on the benches, and turning, all at once, toward New Halcyon. Toward three million people under the Scarecrow's arms. And starting to walk.

And as they walked, things came out of them.

Not fire. Not the way the soldiers at Halden had thrown fire, badly, the way a child throws. Worse. Better. These had been taught. Very carefully. For a very long time. One of them lifted a hand and the ash in front of it rose up in a wall. One of them looked at the dome and the glass in front of it went dark. One of them said nothing at all and the air round the whole row of them went very thick and very still, so that nothing could move through it.

They walked toward the dome.

Mother stood in front of them.

On the ash. Between the walking children and the glass. In her dark coat, with Father's ring on her hand and her grey streak bright in the brown light. The General beside her, in his greatcoat. Anja on her other side, with her arms folded, her silver like the grain in good wood.

Nobody moved first. Luna had said. Nobody attacks. Nobody folds. Nobody tells anyone to do anything.

Mother lifted her hand.

Not at the children. At what came out of them. The wall of ash. The dark. The thick still air. She held all of it. To the width of a hair. The way she'd held three bowls and the flour and the eggs. The way she'd held sixty soldiers in the Senate Annex. The way she'd held every handler on the Kethri world.

And it stopped.

The children kept walking. Their hands together. Their faces turned toward the dome.

But nothing came out of them any more. Mother had it. All of it. Held.

"I'm not going to hurt you," she said. Out loud. Very calmly. To the children. "I'm just holding this. So you don't hurt anyone either. That's all."

The children didn't hear. They kept walking.

They came to the General.

He didn't move.

He stood in his greatcoat on the ash with frost forming very faintly at the edges of it, and his hands at his sides, and let them come. The first of them walked straight into him. A tall child, taller than me, from some world with long limbs and a narrow head. It stopped. Because something was in the way. And stood there with its smooth grey face a few inches from the General's chest.

Waiting to be told.

The General looked at it for a long time.

"I should have done this thirty years ago," he said. Very quietly. "I'm sorry."

The child didn't move.

Neither did the General.

And then the Overseer stepped out from behind the Ground.

It came out onto the ash. Very tall. Very grey. All its long limbs unfolded. With its pale eyes. With Thorne's rye in one hand. With the old brown dog pressed against its leg.

Every child on the ash turned to look at it.

All of them. At once. The ones who'd heard their queens and the ones who hadn't. Every smooth grey face. Because it was grey, and Sorn, and tall, with pale eyes. Because it looked like what they knew. Because it had been made to stand over a world and be obeyed.

They stopped walking.

They waited.

For it to tell them what to do.

The Overseer didn't tell them anything.

It knelt down.

On the ash. Very slowly. All its long grey limbs folding, one after another, the way it had folded at the bottom of our porch steps to put a loaf down. Until it was kneeling. At their height. With the dog beside it.

And it put the bread down on the ash in front of it.

And waited.

Nobody moved for a long time.

The voice came down the rope. Asking is not how it's done. The children flinched. Some of them turned back toward the Hands. Some of them didn't.

The Overseer stayed where it was. Kneeling. Not telling. Not pushing. Being something that didn't fall over.

The dog leaned on it.

And then the tall child with the narrow head, the one standing a few inches from the General's chest, turned. Slowly. Away from the General. Away from the dome. Toward the Overseer. Kneeling on the ash.

And took one step toward it.

Then another.

And stopped in front of it. And looked down at the bread.

And then, very slowly, the way a thing does when it's never done it before and doesn't know if it's allowed, it bent down. And put out one hand.

Not to the bread.

To the dog.

The dog let it.

Of course the dog let it. The dog had let everyone. The Overseer. Garnet. Every child on Avalon. It lifted its old brown head and sniffed the long grey hand, very carefully, and then pushed its nose against it. And leaned.

The tall child stood very still. With the dog leaning on its hand.

And the grey on its face moved.

That was the beginning.

Tally found her at the end.

Hours later. When the sky was going dark over the human world, and the three old Hands hung empty and tired over the dome with their fingers half closed, and the voice coming down the rope had gone very faint, and then fainter, and then I couldn't hear it at all. Because there was nobody left on the ash to hear it. Because every child had either found its queen, or found the Overseer and the dog, or sat down in the ash where it was with its hands in its lap, not because it had been told to, but because it didn't know what else to do, and somebody had sat down beside it.

Jory. Ruth. Sigmund, with two fingers on a heart that was skipping. Neve Ashworth, who'd come back from Carver on the last train and refused to be sent home. The twins, Genny singing, Garnet catching anything that fell. Liam and Sera, holding the fire that came out of a child from some burning world who didn't know how to stop it. Mother, holding everything. The General, standing very still in front of whoever walked into him.

Wren, counting.

And Tally. Going from one to the next. Kneeling in the ash. Opening the notebook. Holding out her hand. Flat. Palm up.

Waiting.

She found her near the Ground. Sitting in the ash, alone, with her back to the iron hull and her hands together in her lap. Older than the others. Not tall. Thin. With something like long fingers, very fine. And a smooth grey curve where a face would be.

She hadn't heard a queen. Her queen wasn't singing. Her queen was on the floor of the long room on Avalon, in sixty-one pieces on sixty-one white cloths, humming one note.

She hadn't come to the Overseer either.

She'd sat down. By herself. Against the hull. And put her hands together. And waited.

Tally knelt in front of her.

She didn't say anything. She didn't open the notebook. She just held out her hand. Flat. Palm up. On the ash between them.

The way Genny had held hers out on the crossing.

For a long time nothing happened.

Then the child's hands moved.

Out of her lap. Very slowly. One of them. Shaking. The way Jory's had shaken in the fitting room behind the suit bay. As if somebody was pushing against it the whole way.

Nobody was pushing. The voice had gone. But she'd been taught for so long that she didn't need the voice to hear it.

She put out one finger.

And laid it on Tally's palm.

Tally didn't move.

She didn't say anything. Her face didn't change. But I was standing at the top of the Ground's ramp, a long way above them, and I saw her silver. Whole. Born whole. Lit up from the inside like a lamp. Every thread of it.

And the child's silver lit up too.

The same note.

Faint. Very faint. Like a voice down a very long pipe.

The first note.

"You put your finger on my place," said Tally. Very quietly. "On the bench. For a long time after I was gone."

The child didn't answer. But her finger moved. Very slightly. On Tally's palm.

"I counted you," said Tally. "Under the ring. From the window. I made a mark." She was crying. Without any sound. "You were the only one on the page."

The grey on the child's face moved.

Wren counted them onto the ships at dark.

Four thousand, two hundred and six. From three Hands. Every one. The ones who'd found their queens went to their queens' ships, and sat in the rooms in the middle with the doors open. The ones who hadn't went to the Ground, because the heavy queen said she had room, and would hold anyone who needed holding.

Tally came up the ramp last. With the child from the bench beside her. Holding her hand.

At the top she stopped. And opened the notebook. To THEM. To the one mark under the word, made a long time ago at a window under a ring.

She made a second mark beside it.

Then she looked at it for a long time. And crossed both of them out. Very carefully. With one line.

And wrote, underneath, in Genny's square letters:

HOME.

I asked the Hands what they wanted.

When everyone was aboard. When the ships were lifting. I went up, out of the Scarecrow, into the brown dark, to the three old Hands hanging empty over the dome with their fingers half closed. I didn't ask them to let me in. I didn't need to. They were empty. There was nobody left in them for anyone to hold.

What would you like?

They didn't answer for a long time. They were very old. Older than the Open Hand. Cracked and mended badly and then not at all.

Rest, said the oldest one, at last. Very faint. Like a door that hadn't been opened in a long time. We would like to rest. We have carried a very long time.

Not back to the ring?

A long pause.

No.

So I folded them. Gently. Not fast, the way I'd folded the small polite one in the Chancellor's chair. Slowly. A fold at a time. The way you'd fold a blanket for someone who was very tired. Smaller and smaller. Until there were three grey stones, very light, in my hand.

I put them in my coat. Next to Garnet's scarf.

And behind them, down the rope, very far away, under a ring, I felt something.

The keeper. At the top of its world. Looking up. At where its three Hands had been.

At nothing.

We came home at dawn.

And Dory was still on the red glass. Still with her hand flat on the ground. Pebble asleep against her legs. Ash asleep against Pebble. She hadn't moved all night. Mother said afterward that Hana had come in from the eastern plains on the night train and found her there and sat down beside her and held a cup of water to her mouth every hour.

She opened her eyes when the Ground came down.

"I held it," she said. Very tired. "All of it. Papa. I held it all."

"I know you did."

"Some of them didn't have anyone singing," said Dory. "I could feel them. On the ash. Waiting." Her lip shook. "I didn't know who they were. I couldn't sing to them. I don't know their names."

"Tally found one," I said. "And Jory. And Ruth. And the Overseer, and the dog. Somebody sat down next to every one. You did amazing, sweetheart, Daddy is proud of you."

Dory looked at me for a long time and smiled.

"Good," she said. And fell asleep on the red glass, with her hand still flat on the ground.

Hana was sitting beside her.

On the glass. In her coat, with ash on her boots from the platform. Efua asleep in her lap. Kwame awake in his sling, watching me.

She looked up.

"You came back," she said.

"I said I would."

"You said yes," said Hana. "That's different. Dory told me." She stood up. Very carefully, so she didn't wake Efua. "I came in on the night train. I wasn't going to. The old woman told me to go. She said there was nothing on the plains that couldn't wait a week, and plenty on Avalon that couldn't." She looked at the ships. At the children coming down the ramps, slowly, holding hands with whoever they'd found. "She was right."

Luna found me in the forge that evening.

Father's forge. The copy. Where Odell had built the first engine. I'd gone there because I couldn't think anywhere else, and because the three grey stones in my coat were heavy in a way that had nothing to do with weight, and the forge was the only place I'd ever been able to put things down.

Luna came in. Then Sera. Then Risa, with small Sigmund asleep on her chest.

They stood in the doorway.

"We have a question," said Luna.

I put down the hammer.

"Sit down," said Sera.

I sat down. On the anvil. The way I'd sat on it the night they came to me with the iron rings, a long time ago, before the wedding, when they'd made them in secret and asked me to finish them.

Luna held something out.

A ring. Iron. Plain. Grey. Like ours.

"Sera made the fire," said Luna. "Risa did the seam. No beginning and no end." She turned it in the light. "I quenched it. In water from the deep." She looked at me. "We'd like you to finish it. Not make it. Finish it."

I didn't take it.

"For Hana," I said.

"For Hana," said Risa.

"She said not yet," said Sera. "On the porch. Before you left. She said when you get back." She folded her arms. "You're back."

"She said Risa says there's a hat," I said.

"There is a hat," said Risa. Very seriously. "It's a very good hat. I've had it since the dome."

"You have to ask her," I said.

"No," said Luna. "We have to ask her. All four of us. The way we asked you." She held the ring out again. "She's not marrying you, Lucas. She's marrying us. All of us. That's what it is. That's what it's always been."

I looked at the three of them in the doorway of Father's forge.

At Luna, with her hair down, and her father's straight back, and the ring in her hand. At Sera, with her arms folded and her jaw set and heat coming off her very faintly the way it always did when she meant something. At Risa, with our son asleep on her chest and her hair lifting very slightly and a very small cloud over the two of them the size of a plate.

I took the ring.

It was warm. Still. From Sera's fire. And I could feel the seam in it, Risa's, going all the way round with no beginning and no end. And under that, cold, the deep water Luna had quenched it in.

I smoothed the inside. That was all. I asked it how wide it wanted to be. And it told me. Exactly the width of the finger that had written me letters, a long time ago, with moon for spoon, that I never once corrected.

I didn't change anything else.

I left it grey.

We asked her in the barn.

Gareth's long low barn past the orchards, where the grass runs down to the seventh lake. Where she'd brushed Bess every afternoon for a year. Where Risa had found her, a long time ago, brushing the same patch over and over, and asked what was wrong.

She was there. Of course she was. She'd gone straight there after Dory fell asleep. With Efua and Kwame in the straw in a box Gareth had built, and Bess's hairy foot in her lap, cleaning it.

She looked up when the four of us came in.

She looked at us for a long time.

Then she put Bess's foot down. Very carefully. And stood up. And brushed the straw off her coat.

"Oh," she said.

Luna didn't make a speech. None of us did.

Luna just held out her hand. With the ring on her palm.

"We'd like you to marry us," she said. "All four of us. If you'd like to."

Hana looked at the ring.

She didn't cry. I'd thought she might. She didn't go red, either. She just stood in the barn with straw on her coat and looked at the plain grey iron ring on Luna's palm, and then at Luna, and then at Sera, and then at Risa with small Sigmund on her chest. And then at me.

"Did you make it?" she said.

"They made it," I said. "I finished it."

"Sera's fire," said Hana. Slowly. Looking at it. "Risa's seam. Luna's water." She looked at me. "Your hands."

"Yes."

Hana reached out.

But she didn't take the ring.

She put her hand flat over Luna's. Over the ring. And held it there. And very slowly, without anyone saying anything, a thread of water came up out of nothing. From the air. From the lake outside. From the straw. A single thread of it, clear and cold, and wound itself round the ring on Luna's palm. Once. All the way round. Like a rope.

And went into the iron.

And stayed there. A thin bright line. Under the grey. With no beginning and no end.

"There," said Hana. "Now it's mine too."

She took it. And put it on.

"Yes," she said.

Efua shouted from the box in the straw.

Every bucket in the barn filled with water to the brim. All at once. Bess put her head in the nearest one and drank and looked very pleased.

Jessa told Sigmund in the hospital.

I wasn't there. Ruth told me. Ruth said she'd been in the records room and the door was open and she'd heard every word and she wasn't sorry.

Sigmund had come off the Wing that morning grey with tiredness. He'd held hearts on the ash for nine hours. A child from a world nobody knew, whose heart had four parts and beat in a rhythm like rain, had stopped twice. He'd started it twice. With Ruth beside him and Neve on the other side and Toby, who'd come down from the Long Legs, listening.

He came into the records room afterward and sat down on the floor with his back against the shelf where the green book was. The way Ruth sat in corridors.

Jessa came in and sat down beside him.

She didn't say anything for a long time.

"I'd like a baby," she said.

Sigmund didn't move.

"I've been thinking about it," said Jessa. "Since the quiet room. Since your sister's storm, and you holding her heart, and the little one coming out with a fence in him." She looked at her hands. "And today. On the ash. All those children with nobody singing to them." She was quiet. "I'd like one who'll always have somebody singing. I'd like it to be yours."

Sigmund sat there with his back against the shelf for a long time.

Then he stood up.

Ruth said it was the most Friese thing she'd ever seen. He stood up, very straight, in the records room, in his scorched shirt, and brushed the dust off his knees. And did up his top button. And then he knelt down again in front of Jessa. Properly. On one knee. On the floor of the records room.

"Jessa Quint," he said. Very formally. As if he was reading it off a slate. "Before anything else. Would you marry me?"

Jessa stared at him.

"That's what you're saying?"

"Yes."

"I tell you I want a baby and you—"

"I'd like to do it in the right order," said Sigmund. Very seriously. "Father would never forgive me." A pause. "Also, I'd like to. Very much. I've wanted to since the night you fell asleep on my shoulder in the crossing and I didn't move till dawn." He looked at her. "Luna saw. She didn't say anything. She just looked at me."

"She told me," said Jessa. "The next morning."

"Of course she did."

Jessa looked at him for a long moment, kneeling on the floor of the records room with his top button done up and his shirt scorched in two places from holding his sister's heart and nine hours of holding everyone else's.

"Yes," she said. "You absurd man. Yes."

Ruth said she wrote it in the records. Under Friese, S. In the same place on the page where everything always goes.

Asked in the right order.

And Liam.

It was Rory the second who did it.

At supper. At the Calder house on the edge of the square. Rory and Maura, and Liam, and Anja, and Pip, and Rory the second in his chair at the end, setting fire to his bread and putting it out again. And Sera and me, because Maura had asked us, and Ash, because Ash went wherever Sera went.

Rory the second looked round the table. Very solemn. He was four, and looked about nine, and had his father's fire and his mother's strength and asked questions nobody wanted to answer.

"Uncle Lucas is getting married again," he said.

"That's right," said Maura.

"To Hana."

"That's right."

"And Uncle Sigmund's getting married to Jessa."

"Yes, love."

Rory the second considered this.

Then he looked at Liam. Then at Anja. Then back at Liam.

"Why aren't you married?" he said.

Nobody said anything.

Liam opened his mouth. Then closed it. Then opened it again. His forearms had gone very slightly bright.

Anja didn't move. She sat at the table with her arms folded, the way she always sat, with her silver like the grain in good wood all up her arms. She looked at Liam. Very steadily.

"Nobody asked," she said.

Maura put her fork down.

Sera put her face in her hands.

Pip said "Oh, no," very quietly, and slid down in her chair until only her eyes showed over the table.

Rory, at the head, looked at his son for a long time. Then he picked up his cup and drank from it, very slowly, and put it down again, and said nothing at all. But his eyes were very bright.

Liam stood up.

His chair went over behind him. His forearms were glowing now. Not dangerously. Just very bright. The way they went when he was embarrassed and didn't know what to do about it.

"I didn't—" he said. "I thought—we had Rory, and we live together, and I thought—"

"You thought," said Anja.

"I thought it was obvious!"

"It is obvious," said Anja. "You still have to ask."

Liam stood there with his forearms glowing and his chair on the floor behind him and his whole family looking at him.

Then he did what Calders do.

He put his hand out. Palm up. Over the table. And a flame came up out of it. Small. Very bright. Steady. The way Rory had taught him, a long time ago. The way he'd put the fire back in the Kethri world.

And in the middle of the flame, a ring.

He hadn't made it. He couldn't. He didn't have the hands for it. But I saw what it was. The iron from the old Calder stove, the one from the dome, that Maura had brought to Avalon in pieces because she said she'd cooked on it for thirty years and wasn't leaving it for anyone. Liam had taken one of the bolts from it. And held it in his fire. And held it. And held it. Not changing it. Just holding it, so hot for so long that it had gone soft and round in the shape of his hand.

It wasn't a very good ring. It was lumpy. Slightly too big.

"I've been carrying it for a year," said Liam. "In my pocket. I kept meaning to." His face was bright red. "I'm asking. Anja. I'm asking."

Anja looked at the ring in the flame for a long time.

Then she reached out. Bare-handed. Into the fire. The way she'd reached into the fire Rory made on the glass, the size of a door, and walked through it. Her skin didn't mark. Not even pink.

She took the ring.

"Yes," she said. "Obviously."

Rory the second clapped.

Then Pip. Then Maura, with her face wet. Then everyone. Sera with her arms round Ash. Rory at the head of the table, still not saying anything, with his hand flat over his eyes.

"There," said Rory the second. Very satisfied. "Now everyone's married."

"Not everyone, love," said Maura.

"Everyone important," said Rory the second. And set fire to his bread again.

We married under the tree.

All of us. On the same day. At the end of that season. The silver tree in the square, with its bark that peeled in long curls and its leaves like small hands that turned to follow the sun. Where Dov and Priya had married. Where Luna and Sera and Risa and I had married. With the whole of the square full, and the green, and the streets, and the broods along the rim, and the long table moved back to make room, with Kwame at the head of it not saying your turn to anybody.

Okafor stood under the tree in her plain dark coat. The way she had the last time.

Holt stood beside her. He said Okafor could do the five of us. He'd do the other four. He said he'd married Dov and Priya and he'd do it well.

And Toby played. Of course Toby played. The song his mother had sung under the tree for him, a long time ago. And Harriet sang the counter-note under it. And Efua shouted, once, at the very end, and every cup on every table in the square filled with water.

And Risa wore the hat.

It was a very good hat.

Tally sat on the end of the long table with her notebook. With the child from the bench beside her. They didn't have a name for her yet. She hadn't asked for one. She'd asked, the first night on the ward, what a name was for, and Tally had told her, and she'd said she would like to wait until she knew what she was.

Tally made a mark for everyone who married.

Nine.

Then she turned to HOME. To the two crossed-out marks, and the word underneath.

And the child from the bench, very slowly, put out one finger.

And touched it.

Days 2448–2502. Rings.

The heavy queen's young came down onto the ash and she rested her head on it, not holding, just there, and when the keeper's voice came down the rope the child didn't turn away. Every queen sang a name, through Dory on the red glass; the children whose queens sang stopped falling. The ones nobody sang for walked toward the dome; Mother held everything that came out of them, the General stood in their way, and the Overseer knelt on the ash with its bread and the dog, and a tall child reached out to the dog first. Tally found the child from the bench sitting alone against the Ground's hull, and her finger on Tally's palm sang the first note. Four thousand two hundred and six came home. The three old Hands asked to rest; I folded them like blankets. Then the four of us asked Hana in the barn with a ring we'd made together, and she wound her water into it and said yes. Sigmund knelt to Jessa in the records room and asked in the right order. Rory the second asked Liam why he wasn't married; Anja said nobody asked; Liam held a bolt from Maura's stove in his fire for a year and asked. Nine under the tree. Risa wore the hat.