Chapter 335 Teams

Four ships went out on the first morning.

Not fourteen. Not one. Four. Okafor stood at the foot of the steps of Scarecrow after the count with Garnet's great sheet of four hundred and twelve circles rolled under one arm and her slate under the other, and read the names off it, the way she'd read names off a slate on the first day in the dome, a long time ago.

Four circles. Four worlds. Four teams.

"Nobody goes alone," she said. When she'd finished. "Everybody teaches. Everybody comes home." She looked at all of us. "And everybody says it out loud tonight. Whatever it is."

Luna didn't go.

She'd wanted to. She'd stood in the map room the night before with her arms folded and said so, three times, in the voice she used for the long table when a brood had been talking for an hour and hadn't got to the point.

"The long table sits tomorrow," said Okafor. "Kwame's at the head. Somebody has to sit beside him who knows which brood is which."

"Voss knows."

"Voss writes it down," said Okafor. "You know it." She looked at Luna. "And if four teams go out and one of them doesn't come home on time, somebody here has to be the person everyone looks at. That's you. It's been you since the dome."

Luna looked at her for a long time.

"That's not fair," she said.

"No," said Okafor. "It's the job."

So Luna stayed.

She came down to the landing field at dawn anyway. With Trevor by the hand and Kwame on her hip, because Kwame wouldn't be left either, and stood at the edge of it in her long coat while the four ships warmed. She didn't say anything to the teams. She'd said it all the night before, at the kitchen table, one at a time, with a list.

She said something to me, though. At the foot of the Scarecrow's ramp. Very quietly. So Trevor wouldn't hear and repeat it.

"Come home on time."

"I'll try."

"Don't try," said Luna. "I've got a long table full of broods who think you can fold a sun. If you're late, they'll want to know why, and I'll have to tell them you stopped to explain something to a rock." She straightened my collar. It didn't need it. "Come home on time, and say it on the porch, and then I'll say it back. In that order."

"You could say it now."

"I could," said Luna. "But then you'd have no reason to hurry."

Kwame leaned out from her hip. He looked at me with Hana's eyes and his own silver ring round them, very bright in the dawn, and the air round the ramp smelled faintly, suddenly, of rain.

"He's saying it," said Luna. "He doesn't have the words yet. That's how he says it."

I leaned in. Kwame reached out and put his small hand flat on my chest. The way Tally did. The way Sera did.

Then he took it back, satisfied, and the smell of rain went with him.

Trevor, at Luna's knee, watched all of this with great suspicion.

"I can say it with words," he said.

"Then say it," said Luna.

He did. Very loudly. So that two of the light-benders on the Long Legs ramp turned round, and Marlo laughed, and Trevor went red to the ears and hid in his mother's coat, and wouldn't come out until the ships had lifted.

Garnet went to a world of glass.

With Reed, who could hear a queen inside anything, even a very small piece of one. With Anja, for standing in front. With Risa, because glass worlds have strange weather, Genny said, and nobody knew what. With Tally, to count. On the Long Legs, with the marsh queen singing the rope toward a circle on Garnet's sheet where a queen in a pillar was pointing home.

Garnet stood at the top of the ramp before it lifted. With her drawing board under her arm and the old brown dog at her feet, which wouldn't be left.

She looked very small.

She looked at me. At the foot of the ramp.

"I've never been anywhere without Genny," she said.

"I know."

"She's always said it. Twice. Every root." Garnet held the drawing board tighter. "What if I can't hear what's inside?"

"Then ask Reed," I said. "She'll tell you. Once. And then you'll know."

"Once isn't twice."

"No," I said. "But you've been listening to Genny say it twice your whole life." I put my hand on her shoulder. "Your silver heard every time. It's been listening. Like everyone's."

Garnet looked at me for a long time.

"Say it," she said.

"Now?"

"Okafor said tonight. I might not be home tonight. Glass worlds have strange weather." She looked at me very steadily. "Say it now. Then I'll have it."

So I said it.

At the foot of the ramp. In front of everyone.

Garnet listened to all of it. Then she nodded once. Exactly like Okafor.

"Good," she said. And went up the ramp.

Genny went to a world of stone.

With her hand back. Mostly. Sera had warmed it every night for three nights at the kitchen table, until it remembered. It was still pale at the fingertips. She kept it in her coat pocket.

She went without Garnet. For the first time in her life.

With Liam, who could see where the air was inside a fire before it went there. With Hana, who could put the air there or take it away. With Neve Ashworth, who'd learned from the twins on the ward how to ask a root which way it had gone in, even if she couldn't take it out. With Jory, for afterward.

"I can't touch," said Genny. In the map room. The night before. When Okafor read her name. "I can only ask. I've never opened anything. Garnet opens. Lucas opens."

"The towers aren't pushing," said Okafor. "Since the middle went quiet. Dask says so. Wren says so." She looked at Genny. "What does grey do when nothing's pushing it?"

Genny didn't answer at once.

"It listens," she said at last. Very slowly. "Like the halls. When the dog lay on it."

"Then go and ask it something," said Okafor. "See if it listens."

Mother went to a world of salt water.

With the General. For the handlers. Because Mother held, and the General froze, and they'd done it together on the Kethri world over the forest, and Mother said if there were going to be handlers coming out of the sea she'd rather be standing next to someone who'd already seen her do it.

The coral queen carried them. In her pool, on the Pool. Singing toward a queen in a tower on a world that was all sea and no land at all.

Mother went up the ramp very straight. In her dark coat. With Father's ring.

At the top she stopped. And turned. And looked at me.

"Say it tonight," she said. "When I'm home. I'd like to hear it again."

"You heard it three days ago."

"I know," said Mother. "I'd like to hear it again."

And I went to the fire.

Okafor had chosen it. From the four hundred and twelve. Not because it was close. Because Wren, listening from the north wall the night before, had heard something on it nobody else could hear.

"There's a keeper," she said. In the map room. "On that one. I can hear it. Standing over the tower." She tilted her head. "It's not pushing. Nothing's coming down its thread. But it's there. It's not moving." She looked at me. "It sounds like the one under the ring did. Before its mother came. When it was just standing there, looking down. Waiting to be told."

"Then that one's mine," I said.

Okafor looked at me for a long time.

"Yes," she said. "That one's yours."

Sera came.

Of course she came. It was a fire world. She said if anyone was going to be standing in front of something that had been feeding off young for longer than anyone remembered, it was going to be a Calder. And Toby, because Wren said the keeper was very still and Toby could hear a heart from across a room and she'd like someone there who'd know if it changed. And Marlo with three light-benders. And Juno with the seed.

The Drenn queen carried us. On the Scarecrow. Singing the rope toward a circle on Garnet's sheet. Toward a queen, very faint, pointing home from somewhere inside the fire.

The world was burning.

Not like the red world, hot and white under a big sun. Burning. All of it. Rivers of something molten running across a black crust that cracked and glowed and smoked. Mountains that weren't mountains, that were fire standing up. A sky that was orange from horizon to horizon, lit from below.

And in the middle of it, on the black crust, a tower.

Grey. Very tall. Grown up out of the burning ground like a thorn. Standing very still.

Not pushing.

And round it, in a great ring on the black, young.

I looked.

From the forward window. Through the heat shimmer that made the whole world swim. Down.

They were made of fire. Or something like it. Low and long and glowing, orange at the edges and white at the middle, like coals that walked. Hundreds of them. In collars. Lying in a ring round the tower with their glowing bodies pressed against the black crust.

Feeding it.

Their heat. Down into the ground. Into something under the tower. Something very large and very hot that the Sorn had wanted kept burning.

They'd been told to feed it. By the tower. For longer than anyone remembered.

And then, three days ago, the tower had stopped telling them anything.

And they were still lying there. In their ring. Feeding it. Because nobody had told them to stop. And nobody had told them they could.

And at the foot of the tower, the keeper.

Standing. Very tall. Very grey. With a long grey face and two pale eyes. Like the keepers from home, at the top of the small grey world. Like the one in the box on the north shelf.

Looking up.

At the tower. At the thread going up out of the top of it, toward the end of the ninth line, very far. Where nothing had come down for three days.

Waiting to be told.

"Light," I said.

Marlo was already there. The Scarecrow wasn't. Anyone looking at us would see the orange sky behind us.

"Toby."

Toby was at the window beside me. His hands in his pockets. His head on one side.

"The young," he said. "Hundreds. Hearts like—" He stopped. "Like fires. Banked. Low. They've been banked a very long time." He was quiet. "The keeper's is very slow. Very steady. Like it's been beating the same way for as long as it's had a heart." He frowned. "It's waiting. You can hear it waiting."

"Can you hear the queen?"

Toby didn't answer. He listened. For a long time.

"Under the tower," he said. "Under the ground. Inside whatever they're feeding." His face changed. "Lucas. She's inside it. The thing under the tower. She's what they're feeding."

I went down.

Out of the side of the Scarecrow, the way I'd gone out over Halden and the red world. Down into the heat. It was worse than the red world. Worse than the forge with every door shut. It came up off the black crust like a wall and hit me and I asked it, very fast, to go round me, and it went round me, mostly.

Sera came down behind me.

She didn't ask the heat to go round her. She took it. Into her arms. Into herself. The way she took the heat out of a horseshoe at the forge every day. She landed on the black crust beside me with her arms already going orange and walked forward through the burning as if it was a summer afternoon.

"Go on," she said. Through her teeth. "I've got the heat. You've got the keeper."

I walked up to it.

Across the black crust. Past the ring of young, glowing, pressed to the ground, feeding. To the foot of the tower.

The keeper didn't look down.

It was looking up. At the thread. At nothing. With its long grey face very still and its pale eyes very wide.

I stopped in front of it.

I didn't fold it. I didn't push. I didn't ask the grey to do anything. I just stood there. In front of it. At the foot of a tower on a burning world.

And waited.

It took a long time.

The keeper looked up at the thread. At nothing. For a long time after I'd stopped in front of it.

Then, very slowly, its long grey face came down.

And looked at me.

You are not from home.

It wasn't a push. It wasn't what are you. It was flat and dry and very thin, like the Overseer's voice, like the keepers from home at the top of the small grey world. But it wasn't telling me to be still.

It was just saying it.

"No," I said.

Nothing has come down the thread. It looked back up. At the tower. For three days. Nothing. A pause. Before, there was always something. Hold. Push. Keep it burning. Take them.

It looked back at me.

Then there was singing. Along the thread. From the wrong end.

"Yes."

And then a question. From home. Who is singing.

"Yes."

And then an answer.

I didn't say anything.

The keeper looked at me for a very long time with its pale eyes.

And then nothing, it said. Nothing comes down the thread. Home is listening. Home has never listened. A pause. I do not know what to do when home is listening.

Behind me, I heard Sera. Very quietly. "Lucas."

I didn't turn round.

The keeper was still looking at me.

You came, it said. Down the thread the wrong way. Like the singing. A pause. Are you the one who asked?

"No," I said. "That was a girl called Tally. She sat in a chair at the end of a long table and answered."

A girl.

"She was on a bench," I said. "Under a ring. With her hands together. Like the ones you were taught on." I looked at it. "Somebody asked her why she'd stopped asking. And she found out she could."

The keeper didn't move for a long time.

I was on a bench, it said.

I didn't say anything.

I couldn't.

Under a ring, said the keeper. A long time ago. I do not remember much. The voice. The benches. Hands together. Its pale eyes went very still. Then I was taught enough. And they sent me here. To stand over this world. To keep it burning. A pause. I have kept it burning for a very long time.

"Do you know what you're keeping burning?"

The keeper looked down. At the black crust under its feet. At the tower. At the young in their ring round it, glowing, feeding.

No, it said. Nobody told me. Keepers are not told what. Only to keep.

"Toby," I said. Without turning round. Through the seed. Through Juno. "Tell it."

Toby's voice came down from the Scarecrow. Very quiet. Very careful. Through Juno. Through the hello. Into the keeper.

"There's a queen under the tower," said Toby. "Inside the thing they're feeding. She's very hot. She's been very hot a very long time. They've been keeping her burning so the grey can grow out of her into the tower." A pause. "The young in the ring are hers. They've been feeding their mother. They don't know it."

The keeper didn't move.

"And there's something else," said Toby. Very quietly. "Her heart. The queen's. It's very slow. Very steady. It's been beating the same way for as long as it's had a heart." A pause. "Like yours."

The keeper looked down at the ground.

For a very long time.

At the black crust under its feet. At the burning under the crust. At the tower growing up out of it. At the young in their ring, pressed to the ground, feeding.

Then it knelt down.

Very slowly. All its long grey limbs folding. The way the Overseer knelt. The way the heavy queen's son couldn't, because it was the top of its world. The keeper knelt on the black crust of a burning world at the foot of the tower it had kept for longer than anyone remembered.

And put its long grey hands flat on the ground.

And listened.

I heard it.

Not with my ears. With the silver. Through the ground. Through the black crust and the burning under it. Very deep. Very hot. Very slow.

A heartbeat.

The same as the keeper's.

Mother, said the keeper.

It wasn't a question.

Under the tower, something answered.

Very faint. Very far down. Through the fire. Through the grey that had grown up out of her into the tower. A sound I'd heard before, from the heavy queen, from Tally's queen, from every queen who'd ever heard her young after a long time of not hearing them.

Mine.

The keeper didn't say anything else.

It knelt there on the black crust with its hands flat on the ground and its long grey head bowed, listening to its mother's heart under the fire. And the young in their ring round the tower, glowing, pressed to the ground, lifted their heads.

All of them. At once.

And looked at the keeper.

"Lucas," said Sera. Very quietly. From behind me. Her arms white to the shoulder with heat. "What do we do?"

I looked at the tower.

Grey. Very tall. Grown up out of the burning ground. Out of a queen. Not pushing. Nothing coming down its thread.

I didn't fold it. I didn't touch it.

I looked at the keeper.

"Would you like it to stop?" I said. "The tower. The burning. Would you like her out?"

The keeper lifted its head.

It looked at me for a very long time.

Is that a thing I am allowed to want?

It was the same thing Tally had said. On the grass at the garden wall, a long time ago, with the grey coming off her face. Is that a thing I am allowed to know?

"Yes," I said.

The keeper looked at the tower. At the young in their ring. At the ground under its hands.

Then I would like it, it said. Please.

So I asked the tower.

Not folded it. Asked it. The way the red queen had sung into hers. The way the blue queen had sung hers down through the ice. I put my hand on the grey, at the foot, beside the keeper's, and asked it what it had been before it was a tower.

It didn't know.

It had grown up out of a queen in a fire, a very long time ago, and been told to be a tower, and been one. Nothing else.

But the keeper knew.

The keeper put its hand on the tower beside mine. Its long grey hand. Very still.

And told it.

You are made of her. Of my mother. You grew out of her because they kept her burning. You do not have to be a tower. You could be her again.

A long pause.

I did not know I could be anything else either. Someone came down the thread the wrong way and asked.

The tower went down.

Not folded. Not sinking, the way the blue queen's tower had sunk through the ice. Down. Into the ground. Into the fire. Back into what it had grown out of. Slowly. All of it. Very tall, and then less tall, and then a stump, and then a soft grey place on the black crust that glowed very faintly orange.

And then the black crust round it cracked.

And something came up.

She was fire.

All of her. Not like the young, coals that walked. Fire. Standing up out of the ground where the tower had been, very tall, very bright, white at the middle and orange at the edges, with something inside her that might have been a shape or might have been a sound.

She looked down at the keeper.

Kneeling at her feet. With its hands flat on the ground. With its long grey face turned up.

The keeper didn't say anything.

Neither did she.

But she bent down. All of her. Fire bending toward grey. And put the brightest part of herself very close to the keeper's face.

Not touching. Close. The way the heavy queen had rested her head on her son. The way Tally held out a hand, flat, and waited.

And the grey on the keeper's face, very slowly, began to glow.

Not burn. Glow. Orange at the edges. The way the young glowed. The way the coals in the forge glow when they're banked low and waiting.

The young came.

From the ring round where the tower had been. Glowing. In their collars. To their mother. And lay down round her in the burning, pressed against her, not feeding her now. Being warmed.

Sera walked among them with her arms white to the shoulder, touching collars.

She couldn't open them. Only Garnet and I could. But she put her hand on each one, flat, the way she put her hand on my chest, and took the heat out of it. And the collar went cold, and grey, and quiet. And the young inside it lifted its head.

I went behind her and opened them.

One after another.

All afternoon.

We came home at dusk.

The keeper didn't come. It knelt on the black crust beside its mother, glowing very faintly, with the young round them both. When I asked if it would like to come to Avalon, it looked at me for a long time.

Not yet, it said. I would like to stay. And listen to her. A pause. I have kept this world a very long time. I would like to know it now.

"If anything comes down the thread—"

Then I will not push it, said the keeper. I will ask it why.

Garnet came home from the glass world with the dog asleep on her feet and Reed asleep against her shoulder and Tally with eleven pages of marks.

Genny came home from the stone world with her hand warm all the way to the fingertips, and Liam with a burn on his wrist he wouldn't explain, and Hana with Neve leaning on her because Neve hadn't slept in two days. The grey on the stone world had listened. Genny had asked it, very quietly, without touching anything, which way it had closed round the young. And it had told her. And when nothing was pushing it, and someone asked, it had opened.

On its own.

"It opened," said Genny. At the kitchen table. With her hand flat on the wood, warm. "I didn't touch it. I asked. And it opened." She looked at me. "Lucas. It's not just us now. It's the grey too. It's listening."

Mother came home from the sea at midnight, very grey in the face, with the General behind her with frost on his coat, and said there'd been two hundred handlers and she'd held every one, and the General had frozen every one, and then the queen in the tower had sung, and the handlers had stopped trying to get out of the ice.

"They just stopped," said Mother. "In the ice. And listened." She sat down in Father's chair. "I don't think anyone's ever sung to a handler before."

Four circles.

Okafor crossed them out at midnight. On Garnet's sheet. In the map room. Four lines. Very neat.

Four hundred and eight left.

She looked at them for a long time.

"Four in a day," she said. To nobody. "It took us four years to do eleven."

"We had to learn how," I said. From the doorway.

She didn't turn round. "I know." She set the pencil down very straight beside the sheet, the way she set everything down. "That's what I'm looking at, Dask. Not the four. The who." She tapped the circles one by one. "Glass. Your sister and a girl who used to be on a bench. Stone. The other sister, with a young doctor from Earth who couldn't do any of this when she came. Sea. Your mother and a man who used to give me orders." She tapped the last one. "Fire. You." A pause. "And the keeper. Who did the actual work."

"It did," I said.

"Write that down somewhere," said Okafor. "Not in your notebook. Somewhere people will read it." She looked at the four hundred and eight left. "Thirty teams by the end of the year. I said that three days ago. I was wrong."

"Fewer?"

"More," said Okafor. "Everyone who comes home tonight is going to teach someone tomorrow. That's how it went with the cadets. That's how it'll go with this." She rolled the sheet up. "Go and say it on the porch, Dask. Luna's been watching the door since dusk."

Garnet told it later. At the kitchen table. After everyone else had gone to bed, with the dog under her chair and her drawing board open in front of her and a page on it I wasn't allowed to see yet.

The glass world had been all one piece. That was the strange weather. No wind, no rain. Just light, going round and round inside the ground, so that the whole world rang very faintly all the time like a glass with a wet finger on the rim. Risa had stood on the ramp for a long time with her head on one side and then said it wasn't weather at all, it was singing. Very old singing. Stuck.

The queen was in a pillar. Under the glass. You could see her, Garnet said. That was the worst part. You could see her from the top, looking down, like a fly in a window. And the young were round the pillar, in collars, very thin, made of something clear, so you could see their silver going round and round inside them with nowhere to go.

"I couldn't hear inside," said Garnet. "The glass. It rang too loud. I put my hand on it and it was just ringing." She turned her pencil over in her fingers. "So I asked Reed."

Reed had knelt on the glass and put her ear to it. The way she put her ear to the bench, Garnet said, the first day, when she heard someone on the other side.

"Under," Reed had said. "To the left. Where it's quietest. She's holding her breath."

Once.

"And I heard it," said Garnet. "After she said it. Not because she said it twice. Because I'd been listening for twice my whole life, and when it only came once, I listened harder." She looked up at me. "Is that what you meant? At the ramp?"

"Something like that."

"It wasn't like that," said Garnet. "It was exactly that." She bent back over the page. "You should be more sure of yourself."

She'd opened the glass where it was quietest. Not cut it. Opened it, the way the grey opened when it was asked. And the queen had let her breath out, after however long, and the ringing in the whole world had changed. Gone down. Gone softer. Gone into a note.

"Tally counted the young," said Garnet. "Six hundred and twelve. She wrote them all down. She cried at three hundred and something, and then she kept counting, and Anja held her coat so she wouldn't fall over." A pause. "Anja didn't have to stand in front of anything. Nothing came. She was cross about it all the way home."

She turned the drawing board round.

It was the glass world. From above. The pillar, and the queen, and six hundred and twelve young, and four small figures and a dog on the glass. And all through the glass, round and round, very faint lines in pencil, going out from the middle in rings.

"That's the note," said Garnet. "After. I didn't know how to draw a note. So I drew where it went."

"Where did it go?"

Garnet looked at the drawing for a long time.

"Here," she said. And put her finger at the edge of the page. Where the rings ran off the paper. "Toward us. It's on the map now. Four hundred and thirteen." She took the pencil back. "Okafor doesn't know yet. I'm going to tell her at breakfast. She'll have to redo the sheet."

I went up on Father's roof before I went to bed.

The way I had every night since I'd started hearing everything. To sit with it. To let it come in and go past, the whole of Avalon at once, two hundred thousand silvers and three million more and all the broods and all the queens, a sound like a city at the bottom of the sea.

And under it, very far away, at the end of the ninth line, the middle.

Listening.

It was the strangest thing I'd ever heard. A silence that had weight. That leaned toward us, the way you lean toward a door when someone on the other side is talking and you can't quite make out the words. Four days now. It hadn't pushed. It hadn't sung. It hadn't asked anything else.

But tonight something had changed.

Four new notes had come up the threads toward it. From a fire world, and a world of glass, and a world of stone, and a world that was all sea. Four queens singing who hadn't sung in longer than anyone remembered. And at the end of the ninth line, very faint, so faint that if I hadn't been listening to nothing for four days I'd never have heard it, the weight shifted.

Toward the fire world.

Toward the keeper. Kneeling beside its mother. Glowing.

I didn't know what it meant. I sat on Father's roof with my knees up and listened to it for a long time, and I still didn't know.

But I knew what it sounded like.

It sounded like the keeper had, at the foot of its tower, three days into nothing coming down the thread. Looking up. Waiting to be told.

Except it was the other way round.

I said it that night.

To everyone. On the porch. The way Okafor ordered. To Mother, in Father's chair, who listened to all of it with her eyes shut. To Garnet, asleep on the rail with the dog. To Genny, with her warm hand. To Sera, whose arms were still faintly orange at the elbows. To Luna and Risa and Hana. To Dory, awake now, and Ash, and the babies.

And then I said something else.

"There was a keeper," I said. "On the fire world. It knelt down and put its hands on the ground and heard its mother's heart. Under a tower it had kept burning for longer than anyone remembers." I looked at all of them. "It asked if it was allowed to want something."

Nobody said anything.

"I told it yes," I said.

Dory, on the top step, with Pebble, looked up at me.

"Did it say thank you?"

"It said please," I said. "Before. When it asked."

Dory considered this.

"That's the same," she said. "Nearly."

Days 2731–2733. Teams.

Four ships, four worlds: nobody alone, everybody teaches, everybody says it out loud. Luna stayed with the long table and made me promise to come home on time. Garnet heard the glass world's queen through Reed, once, and drew where its note went: toward us, a four hundred and thirteenth circle. Genny asked stone without touching it, and it opened. Mother and the General held two hundred handlers until the sea queen sang them still. On the fire world a keeper who'd once sat on a bench knelt, heard its mother's heart under the tower it kept, asked if it was allowed to want her out, and stayed to know her. That night the middle's silence leaned toward it.