Chapter 324 Underneath the Ring

Luna drew the halls on the kitchen table.

Not from my looking. From Reed's.

She sat across from Reed at the end of the table, the way Genny sat when she did chemistry, with a lamp between them and a great many sheets of paper and Tally beside Reed with the notebook. And Reed told her. Not in words, mostly. Reed didn't have many words yet. In her hands. In the curve of her long fingers on the table. In the way she'd stop and close her eyes and Tally would say she means the third hall down, the one where the floor slopes, or she means the place where the voice is loudest, by the ridge.

Luna drew it all.

Every hall. Every bench. Every turn of the long grey passages going down and round inside the small grey world like the inside of a shell. Where the windows were. There was only one. Where the voice came down. Where the handlers walked, and when. Where the wardens stood. Where the grey was thickest, and where it was thin.

It took nine nights.

On the tenth, Luna put her pen down. And sat back. And looked at all of it, spread across the whole of the kitchen table and onto the floor and up the side of the dresser where she'd pinned the deepest halls because there was nowhere else to put them.

"There," she said. "That's where they are."

Reed looked at it for a long time.

Then she reached out. One long finger. And put it on a bench. In one of the deepest halls, near the bottom of the dresser. Third row. Near the back.

"That is where I sat," said Tally. For her. "She says. And this—" Reed's finger moved, very slightly, to the empty place beside it. "That is where I sat. Before I was sent."

Luna looked at the two places on the paper for a long time.

Then she took her pen and drew a very small circle round both of them.

Okafor laid it out in the map room the next night.

Not a speech. She never made speeches. She stood at the head of the table with Luna's drawings pinned to every wall of the map room, all round, floor to ceiling, so that standing in the middle of the room was like standing in the middle of the small grey world under the ring.

"Fifty-four thousand, one hundred and six," she said. "Under a keeper that's grown into the top of its world. That's looking the other way, for the first time, toward home. That's going to stop looking the other way as soon as anything happens it doesn't understand." She put her hand flat on the table. "We go in quietly. We take them out from under it. All of them. And when it looks down, there's nobody there."

"And then?" said the General.

"And then," said Okafor, "it's standing on nothing."

She went round the table.

The way she always did. Slowly. Every name. Every job. Written on the slate as she said it.

Every ship. All fourteen. The Scarecrow and the Ground and the Open Hand and the Steady and all the iron ones. Every queen who'd like to come, and could leave whenever she liked.

Every queen with young in the halls. Singing names. The way they'd sung on the ash.

Marlo and every light-bender on Avalon. So the fleet wasn't there.

Genny. To ask the grey.

Garnet. To hold anything that falls.

Tally and Reed. To find the ones who touched hands.

Jory. Ruth. Neve. Sigmund. For afterward.

The General. Anja. For standing in front.

Not Mother.

"She asked to stay," said Okafor. Before I could say anything. "She came to me this morning. She said the porch needs her. She said the children without queens are going to be holding on with everyone else, and somebody who's been held should be holding them while they do it." Okafor looked at the slate. "I said yes."

Liam, Sera. Risa. Luna. Hana.

She stopped at that one.

"Osei," she said. "You were on the plains."

"I was," said Hana. From the back of the room. "The old woman sent me home. She said if I didn't go this time she'd sell Bess." She shifted Kwame in his sling. "She wouldn't. But I believed her for long enough to get on the train."

"What will you do?"

"Hold the air," said Hana. Very steadily. "In the halls. Under the grey. Tally says it's very thick, very still, it doesn't move. When they come out—when the grey comes off their faces, the way Reed's did, all at once—some of them won't be able to breathe. Not properly. They'll have been breathing through the grey for years." She put her hand on Kwame's head. "I can hold the air for them. A thousand ropes of it. Until they remember how."

Okafor looked at her for a long time.

Then she wrote it.

Hana. Air.

Wren. To count.

The Overseer.

Okafor stopped again.

The Overseer was standing at the end of the table. Stooping, very low, under the map room ceiling, with its long grey head nearly touching the beam. With Thorne's rye in its hand. With the dog across its feet.

"You asked to be there," said Okafor. "At the ash."

"Yes."

"I'm asking you something else now," said Okafor. "The grey. In the halls. Genny says it's never been anything else. It's been grey since before the halls were halls." She looked at Genny. "Tell it."

Genny was on the floor, by the wall, under Luna's drawing of the deepest halls. With her notebook.

"On the Kethri world," said Genny, "the new grey wouldn't listen. When Lucas asked it to be a ship. It fought. It didn't know how to be anything else. Nobody had ever told it there was anything else to be." She looked at the Overseer. "And the Drenn queen sat in it and told it what she'd been. A child, on her world. Before. And the grey listened. Because if she could be something else, it could too."

"I remember," said the Overseer. "I was not there. But the dog told me."

Nobody laughed. Nobody was sure it was a joke.

"The grey in the halls is the same," said Genny. "Older. Much older. Grey that's never been anything but grey, that's held children on benches since before anyone remembers." She looked up at the Overseer. "It won't listen to me. I'm not grey. It won't listen to Lucas. He's not grey either. He'd have to make it, and Okafor says nobody makes anything, not in the halls, not this time."

"And I am grey," said the Overseer.

"You're grey," said Genny. "You were made from it. From grey and a piece of a queen and an order." She held its pale eyes. "And then a girl left bread on a stone. And you found out there was something else."

The Overseer didn't say anything for a long time.

"You would like me to tell it," it said at last.

"I'd like to ask you," said Genny. "If you'd tell it. You don't have to."

The Overseer looked down at the loaf in its hand.

"I have never told anything anything," it said. "Except orders. And I do not give those any more." It looked at the dog across its feet. "But I could tell it about the bread. About the dog. About the girl at the stone. About the porch, and the children leaning." A long pause. "That is not an order. That is only what happened."

"That's all the Drenn queen told the Scarecrow," said Genny. "What happened."

The Overseer nodded slowly.

Okafor wrote it.

The Overseer. To tell the grey what happened.

Dory.

Okafor didn't write it. She looked at the slate for a long time.

"On the glass," she said. "At home. Again." She looked at me. "Ask her."

I asked her.

On the porch, that night, with Pebble and Ash and the babies, and Mother in Father's chair. Dory listened to all of it very seriously. Then she looked at Reed, sitting on the end of the porch rail beside Tally.

"How many?" she said.

"Fifty-four thousand, one hundred and six," said Tally.

Dory considered this.

"That's more than the ash," she said.

"Yes."

"That's more than I've ever held." She looked down at her hands. At the frost-lattice of silver up her wrists. "Papa. I don't know if I can hold that many."

I didn't say anything for a long time.

"You don't have to hold them," said Mother. From Father's chair. Very quietly. "You only have to hold the singing. So it gets there." She held out her hand. "And you don't have to do it on your own."

Dory looked at her grandmother.

"Who'll help?"

"Everyone," said Mother. "Everyone on Avalon who can hear a queen. All the children. All of them who were born whole. The ones on the long table. The ones on the porch. Efua. Kwame. Sigmund. Trevor. Ash." She looked at the end of the porch rail. "Every child who came home on the ash. Every one who heard their queen singing their name. They know what it sounds like now." She was quiet. "They'll want to help. You only have to ask them."

Dory asked them.

The next morning. After the count. She stood on the red glass in the middle of Scarecrow with Pebble beside her, and put her hand flat on the ground, and asked. Not out loud. Through the hello. Through every queen. Into every child on Avalon who'd been born whole, or found whole, or had a queen sing their name.

I need help holding. Tomorrow. Would you like to?

The answer came back so loud that Juno sat down on the glass.

We left at dawn. After the count.

Fourteen ships. Every queen on every one who'd like to come. And on the red glass behind us, not one small girl with her hand flat on the ground.

Thousands.

All over Avalon. On the plain at Scarecrow. In Carver's square, past the ninth lake. In the long tunnels under Ashby, by the western sea. On the shore of Stillwater's clear lake. In the Reach, on the far eastern plains, where the old woman from the horse family stood at the edge of the grass with her hand on Bess's neck and watched a hundred children from the new town kneel down in the grass and put their hands flat on the ground.

Every child who could hear a queen.

On the porch of the crooked house at the end of the street, the children with no queens. Holding hands in a line on the steps. Not hearing anything. Holding on anyway. Because Dory had asked, and Mother had said you can, if you'd like, and they'd liked.

And in the middle of all of it, on the red glass at Scarecrow, Dory. With Pebble on one side and Ash on the other. Efua in Mother's arms, beside her, shouting. Kwame in his sling against Mother's chest, watching. Small Sigmund on a blanket, crackling. Trevor beside him with frost spreading out in a perfect circle.

"I'm holding," said Dory. Through everything. "We're holding. Go."

The night before, the house didn't sleep.

Nobody said so. Everyone just didn't. Luna at the kitchen table with the drawings of the halls, going over them again, though she knew every line. Sera at the stove, not cooking anything, with her hand flat on the iron. Risa on the porch steps with small Sigmund asleep on her chest and a cloud the size of a plate over the two of them, perfectly still, not raining.

And Hana in the big chair. With Efua asleep across her lap and Kwame awake in his sling. Watching me.

"You're frightened," she said.

"Yes."

"Good," said Hana. "That means you'll pay attention." She almost smiled. "I said that to Mira Lisk on the platform. Before the first train. She told me afterward it was the most useful thing anyone had ever said to her." She looked down at Kwame. "I've been frightened since the ash. I'm frightened now. I'm going to hold the air in a hall full of children who've forgotten how to breathe on their own, and I don't know how many there'll be, and I don't know if I can hold enough." She put her hand on his head. "And I'm going anyway. That's all being brave is. Papa told me that. When I was small. When the water came up on Harbor Block Forty-four and he went down into it."

Luna put her pen down at the table.

"Come here," she said. To all of us.

So we went. All five of us. And sat round the kitchen table at two in the morning with the drawings of the halls under our hands and five iron rings on five hands, and didn't say anything at all for a long time.

Then Sera put her hand flat on the table. In the middle. On the drawing of the deepest hall.

Luna put hers on top. Then Risa. Then Hana.

Then me.

"Every one," said Luna. Very quietly.

"Every one," said Sera.

Reed made the rope.

She stood at the forward window of the Scarecrow, beside the Drenn queen's open door. Very tall. Very thin. With her new face and her large dark eyes. And Tally beside her, holding her hand.

And she didn't sing. She didn't know how to sing yet. She thought about a bench. Third row. Near the back. In one of the deepest halls. And the empty place beside her, where Tally had sat once, and been sent away, and where Reed had put one finger every day for years after.

And she thought about the others.

The ones she'd told Tally about, in the map room, very slowly, with her hands. There were more. On other benches. In other halls. Children who'd touched someone's hand under a bench where the voice couldn't see. One finger. Every day. Without knowing why. And never told the voice.

She thought about them.

And the Drenn queen, in her room, with her door open, sang one low word. Toward a bench, in a deep hall, under a ring.

And something answered at once.

Not one finger. Many. All over the small grey world. On benches in every hall. Dozens. Hundreds. Children who'd been touching hands under the benches for years where the voice couldn't see. Who'd felt the rope come and had touched it, the way they touched each other.

The thread went tight.

It wasn't heavy at all.

Wren counted the crossing.

Not the fleet. The people on the Scarecrow. The way she'd counted us on the first crossing to the ring, with Toby's stone against her ear, every morning in the dark between the pages. Safi. Aster. Marlo. Okafor, at the forward window, with her slate. The General. Luna, with the drawings. Sera and Risa and Hana. Genny and Garnet. Tally and Reed. The Overseer, stooping in the hold with the dog. Jory, on the floor by the Drenn queen's door, with his knees pulled up. Ruth, and Neve, and Sigmund, with a crate of the grey books between them.

"Twenty-three," said Wren. "And the queen."

Jory didn't look up.

"I was in the halls," he said. Very quietly. To nobody. "Not those ones. The Program floors. On Earth. In rows." He looked at his hands. "They were nothing like this. They were a few years. These are—" He stopped. "Reed says she doesn't remember the first one. The first bench. She says she was too small."

Ruth sat down on the floor beside him. In her coat. The way she sat in corridors.

"You don't have to go down," she said. "Nobody's told you to."

"I know," said Jory. "That's why I'm going." He looked at her. "When they come up. The ones whose queens aren't singing. Somebody should be there who knows what it's like. To have nothing pushing any more, and not know what to do with your hands." He held his up. Empty. "I didn't know for weeks. Tally gave me a pencil."

Ruth looked at him for a long time.

Then she reached into her coat. And took out a pencil. And then another. And another. A handful. And put them in his hands.

"Then give them these," she said. "As many as you need. I've got a crate."

Neve Ashworth, across the hold, laughed. Very quietly. Into her sleeve.

"She's been carrying pencils for a month," she said. "She wouldn't tell me why."

The sky was black. With stars like dust. With the ring across it, edge-on, like a blade. With two suns low under it, one blue, one red, going round each other too slowly to see.

And under the ring, the small grey world.

Marlo put his hands flat on the Scarecrow's hull. So did every light-bender on every ship. And the fleet wasn't there.

I looked up.

At the top of the small grey world. Where the ridges met. Where the keeper was grown into the grey, so that you couldn't tell where it stopped and the world began. With its many pale eyes.

Turned away.

Every one. Not down into the halls. Not toward us. Away. Toward the far side of the sky. Along a line that went out past every star I could see, nearly off the edge of anything. Toward a place where voices like it came from.

It was calling.

I could feel it. Not hear it. A long thin pull, going out of the top of the world, very far, very steady. Something has happened. I do not understand it. Come.

It didn't look down.

The voice still came down.

That was the thing I hadn't understood. The keeper wasn't looking at the halls. But the voice didn't need it to look. The voice had been coming down into the halls for so long that it came on its own. Out of the grey. Every few minutes. Like a clock that's been wound so long it doesn't need winding any more.

Asking is not how it's done.

The children on the benches went very slightly stiller.

Every one.

We came down on the small grey world.

All fourteen ships. Very slowly. Very quietly. On the ridges. In the folds. Where Luna's drawings said the grey was thin. And opened our ramps.

And I couldn't open the walls.

I'd known I couldn't. Okafor had said: nobody makes anything. Not this time. And I knew why. If I asked the grey to open, and it didn't want to, I'd have to make it. And making it would be loud. In the grey. All through it. Up to the top, where the keeper was grown in. And the keeper would feel it, even looking away.

So I stood on the ridge at the foot of the Scarecrow's ramp, on grey that had never been anything but grey, and didn't do anything at all.

And the Overseer walked past me.

It went down onto the grey. Very slowly. With its long limbs unfolding. With the old brown dog beside it. With Thorne's rye in its hand. And when it was a little way out from the ships, on a flat place in the fold, where Luna's drawing said the grey was thinnest, right over the deepest halls, it stopped.

And knelt down.

All the way. Its long grey limbs folding, one after another. Until it was kneeling on the grey. With its long grey hands flat on it.

And it told the grey what happened.

I heard it. I don't know how. Not through the hello. The Overseer didn't have the hello. Not through the seed. Through the grey itself, I think. Coming up through my feet, very thin, very dry, like paper that had been folded and unfolded too many times.

I was made, said the Overseer. To the grey. Of you. Of grey, and a piece of a queen, and an order. I was told to hold a world and report. I held it. I reported.

And then I stopped.

A girl left bread on a stone. At the mouth of a passage. I did not know what it was. I did not know it was for me. I did not know anything could be for me.

I ate it.

And I did not know there was anything else. And then there was.

The grey under my feet was very still.

A dog leans on me now, said the Overseer. Every day. Its whole weight. I do not know why. Nobody told it to. And there are children on a porch who lean on me. And I give them bread. Nobody told me to.

I was grey. I am still grey. But I am grey that a dog leans on.

A long pause.

You do not have to be only what you were made for. Nobody told me that either. I found it out.

I am telling you. That is all. That is not an order.

That is only what happened.

The grey didn't do anything for a very long time.

I stood on the ridge and waited. Genny knelt beside me with her hand flat on it, listening. Her eyes were shut. Her lips were moving.

"It doesn't understand," she whispered. "It's never heard anything that wasn't an order. It's trying to find the order in it. There isn't one." She was very still. "It's—"

She stopped.

"Oh," she said.

The dog lay down on the grey.

Beside the Overseer. Right there, on the flat place in the fold, over the deepest halls. It turned round three times, the way dogs do, and lay down on the grey with its old brown head on its paws and its side pressed against the Overseer's knee. And sighed. And shut its eyes.

Its whole weight.

On the grey.

And the grey felt it.

I felt it too. Through my feet. Through the ridge. Through all of it. Something very old and very large and very still, that had been grey since before anyone remembered, that had held children on benches in the dark for longer than there had been a word for it, feeling, for the first time, something lean on it.

Not stand on it. Not sit on it to be taught. Lean on it.

Something that didn't want anything. That wasn't waiting to be told. That was just tired, and old, and warm, and there.

The grey under the dog went soft.

Very slightly. Just there. Just under the dog. Like a cushion.

The way the grey on Tally's face had gone soft, a fold at a time, when Voss sat down on the grass.

"Now," said Genny. Very quietly. "Now ask it. Lucas. It'll listen now."

I knelt down. On the ridge. Beside her. And put my hands flat on the grey.

And I didn't make it do anything.

I asked.

Would you like to open? Just a little. Just a door. Into every hall. So the children can come out, if they'd like to. You don't have to. But you could.

A long time.

Then, under the dog, under the Overseer's flat grey hands, a crack.

Not a door. Not yet. A crack. Like a seam. Like the fine line Risa put through an iron ring, with no beginning and no end. Going down. Into the grey. Into the deepest hall.

And then another. Over by the Ground. Into the next hall up.

And another.

All over the small grey world. On every ridge. In every fold. Wherever a ship had come down and opened its ramp. Cracks. Going down. Slowly. Softly. Opening.

Not because I'd made them.

Because the grey had been leaned on.

The queens began to sing.

All of them. On every ship. Through every open ramp. Down every crack, into every hall. The heavy queen. The Kethri queens. The furred queen. The Drenn queen. The marsh queen, who'd said nothing for months and sang now so loud and so low that the grey under the Long Legs trembled.

And behind them, across the dark, along the hello, held by thousands of children with their hands flat on the ground all over Avalon, every queen who couldn't come.

Names.

Down into the dark.

The handlers felt the cracks.

Not the keeper. The keeper was still looking away. But in the folds of the small grey world, where Luna's drawings said they walked, the handlers and the wardens felt the grey go soft under their feet. And stopped. And turned. Very slowly. Toward the ridges where the ships had come down, where Marlo's light-benders were bending everything so that nobody could see anything.

They couldn't see us. But they could feel the grey.

A warden came round the end of a fold, near the Ground. Tall. Grey. Pale-eyed. The kind I'd folded in the forest, a long time ago, and put in a box on the north shelf. It stopped at the edge of a crack, where the grey had opened into the hall below, and looked down into it. At the light coming up. At the singing.

And the General stepped out of nothing in front of it.

Marlo let him. Marlo bent the light back off him, just him, just there. So that the warden, looking down into the crack, looked up and saw an old man in a greatcoat, standing on the grey between it and the hall, with frost forming very faintly at the edges of his coat.

Anja stepped out beside him. With her arms folded.

The warden looked at them for a long time.

It didn't do anything. It didn't know what to do. Nothing had ever stood in front of it before. Nothing had ever stood in front of anything, here.

"Go on," said the General. Very quietly. "I'm listening."

The warden stood there. Then, very slowly, it took one step back.

And another.

And stopped. And stood there, at the edge of the fold, looking at the old man in the greatcoat. Not coming any closer. Not going away.

Waiting to be told.

Nobody told it anything.

All over the small grey world, the same.

Handlers coming round the folds. Wardens at the edges of the cracks. And somebody stepping out of nothing in front of every one. Liam, with his arms bright. Sera, with heat coming off her in waves. Risa, with her hair standing straight up and a cloud the size of a house over her head, not raining. The Drenn, a few of them, the ones who'd come with their queen, with their arms folded and their blades crossed.

Nobody attacked anything. Nobody folded anything.

They stood there.

And the handlers stopped. And stood there too.

Waiting.

Reed went down first.

Not into the deepest hall. Not yet. Into the first one. Near the top. Where the crack under the Scarecrow had opened. She stood at the edge of it for a long time, looking down. At the benches. At the rows. At the smooth grey faces, every one, turned the same way.

Tally stood beside her.

"You do not have to," she said.

Reed looked at her.

Then she held out her hand. Not flat. Not palm up. Just held it out, the way you hold your hand out to someone you'd like to walk with.

Tally took it.

And they went down. Together. Through the crack. Into the halls. And at every bench they passed, Reed reached out with her other hand and touched one finger, very lightly, to the back of a child's hand. Not stopping. Not waiting. Just touching. Every one. All the way down.

Some of them turned their heads.

In the hall below the Wing, a child with folded wings under grey heard the three Kethri queens singing together down the crack, and stood up off its bench. Not because it was told. It didn't know why. It stood there in the row, very straight, with its wings shaking under the grey, while the children on either side of it sat with their hands together and didn't move.

Then the child beside it, small, round, with no wings at all, from some other world entirely, looked up at it.

And stood up too.

Not because a queen was singing its name. No queen was. Because the one beside it had.

Garnet saw it. She was at the edge of the crack, holding anything that fell. She told me afterward, on the ship, with her drawing board on her knees and her face very wet.

"It didn't hear anything," she said. "Nobody sang for it. It just saw the one next to it stand up." She drew a line. Then another. "That's how it went down the ward. With the beds. Tally lying down, and then the next one, and the next." She looked at me. "They don't need a queen, Lucas. Not all of them. Some of them just need the one next to them."

And in the deepest hall, third row, near the back, Reed walked in through the crack.

Tally held her hand. Hana was behind them, with her hands out, holding the thick still air of the hall so that it moved. Just a little. Just enough to breathe.

The hall was the same as I'd seen it from the window, a long time ago. Long and low and grey. Benches in rows, going away into the dark. Children on the benches. Hundreds. Straight-backed. Hands together. Every one with a smooth grey curve where a face would be.

Very still.

The voice came down. Asking is not how it's done. They went very slightly stiller.

Reed walked down the row. Slowly. Third row. Toward the back. Past child after child after child, sitting straight, hands together. To a bench near the end.

Where a small child sat. Younger than Reed. Younger than Tally, even. Small and pale and thin. With her hands together in her lap.

Except one finger.

Out. Resting on the empty place beside her.

Where Reed had sat.

Reed sat down.

On the empty place. On the bench. Beside the small child. The way she'd sat there for years. Very straight. With her hands together.

And then she unfolded them.

And put one finger out. Very lightly.

On the small child's hand.

The small child's smooth grey face turned.

Toward her.

Slowly. Shaking. The voice came down, asking is not how it's done, and the small child flinched, and its face started to turn back. And Reed didn't take her finger away. And Tally, standing in the row behind them, put her hand flat on the back of the bench, very lightly, the way Mother put her hand on things. And didn't take it away either.

The small child's face stopped turning.

It stayed. Turned toward Reed.

And Reed said, very hoarse, the second word I ever heard her say. The one she'd learned on the porch. From Tally. Every morning. When Tally told her what she'd dreamed.

"Water," said Reed.

And up at the top of the small grey world, where the ridges met, where the keeper was grown in, I felt something.

The long thin pull going out along the ninth line, come, come, something has happened, stopped.

Very suddenly.

And all those many pale eyes, every one, began, very slowly, to turn.

Away from the far side of the sky.

Back.

Down.

Days 2542–2575. Under the ring.

Reed showed Luna the halls with her hands over nine nights, and Luna drew them on every wall of the map room: her bench, and the empty place beside it. Okafor's list: every ship, every queen with young there, every light-bender, Genny to ask the grey, the Overseer to tell it what happened, Hana to hold the air when the faces come off. Dory asked for help holding, and thousands of children all over Avalon knelt with their hands flat on the ground, even the ones on Mother's porch who couldn't hear anything. Reed made the rope by thinking of the bench; hundreds who'd touched hands under benches answered it at once. The keeper's eyes were turned away along the ninth line, calling home; the voice kept coming down on its own like a wound clock. I couldn't make the grey open. The Overseer knelt and told it what happened: the bread, the dog, the porch. Then the dog lay down on it, its whole weight, and the grey under it went soft. When I asked, it opened. Every queen sang down the cracks. In the deepest hall Reed sat back down on her bench and put her finger on the hand of the small child who'd kept her place, and said water. And the keeper stopped calling home, and began to look down.