Chapter 337 Kneeling

Wren woke me before dawn.

She didn't knock. She never had. She came into the room and stood at the foot of the bed in her coat with her eyes half shut and said, "Lucas," once, not loudly, and I was awake before she'd finished the word.

Luna rolled over. Looked at Wren. Looked at me.

"Map room?"

"Not yet," said Wren. "Roof first. He needs to hear it before Maris starts asking questions."

So we went up on Father's roof.

The two of us. In the grey before dawn, with the town still dark below and the train lamp sitting cold in its shed and the heavy queen a long low shape on the red glass beside the Ground, breathing slow.

Wren sat down with her back to the chimney. I sat beside her.

"Listen to the ninth line," she said.

I listened.

To everything first. The way it always came. Avalon, and the broods, and the queens, a city at the bottom of the sea. Then I let it go past. Out. Along the threads. Past the worlds we'd freed, coloured in on Garnet's sheet, singing. Past the worlds that weren't freed yet, still pointing home, still waiting. Out to the ninth line. The long one. The one that went all the way to the middle.

There were towers on it. A great many. I'd heard them for weeks. Standing very still since the middle went quiet. Each with a keeper at its foot, looking up.

They weren't looking up now.

"How many?" I said.

"Forty-one," said Wren. "Since midnight. That I can count." She had her eyes shut. "It's still going. Every tower the middle stopped at on the way back. One at a time."

I listened.

Forty-one keepers. On forty-one worlds along the ninth line. Who'd been standing at the foot of their towers for longer than anyone remembered, looking up at the thread, waiting to be told.

Kneeling.

Every one of them. With their long grey hands flat on the ground.

Listening down.

"It asked them," I said.

"I don't think so," said Wren. "I don't think it said anything. It stopped. On the way back up. At every tower. And listened." She opened her eyes. "And the keepers heard it listening. And they'd never heard it do that. Not once. Not in all the time they've been keepers." She looked at me. "So they did it too."

"Listened."

"Down," said Wren. "The way the fire keeper did. Because that's the only thing they'd ever heard of a keeper doing that wasn't being told."

The sun was coming up over the plain. Very slowly. Turning the red glass pink.

"Forty-two," said Wren.

Okafor did ask questions.

A great many. In the map room, with Garnet's new sheet under her hands and the sun coming in sideways through the high windows. Wren answered all of them in the same flat counting voice, and I answered the ones she couldn't, and by the time Luna came in with coffee there were fifty-eight.

"Are they pushing?" said Okafor.

"No."

"Are their towers pushing?"

"No."

"Is anything coming down the thread to them?"

"No," said Wren. "The middle's still going. Tower to tower. It's past the seventh line now. Coming back round." She tilted her head. "It's not stopping on the seventh line. It's not listening there. Only the ninth." She was quiet. "It's in a hurry now. On the others."

"Why?"

Nobody knew.

Okafor looked down at the sheet. At the ninth line, running from the edge of the page toward the space in the middle where Garnet hadn't drawn anything.

"Fifty-eight keepers," she said. "On their knees. Listening for their mothers." She tapped the line. "How many of them are going to hear one?"

Tally knew.

She came in from the porch with Reed behind her, both of them still in their nightclothes with blankets round their shoulders, and Reed's face was very white.

"Some of them," said Reed. Very quietly. She'd never said much. She said it once, and that was all, and you listened. "Some of them hear something. Under. Like the fire one. A heart." She swallowed. "Some of them don't."

"Don't hear anything?"

"Don't hear a heart," said Reed. She held the blanket tighter. "They hear where one was. The shape of it. In the grey." She looked at the floor. "And they keep listening. Because they don't know what it means when there's only the shape."

Nobody said anything.

Tally sat down at the great table. In the chair at the end. The one she'd answered from.

"They're asking," she said.

Okafor looked at her.

"Up the threads. The ones that only hear the shape." Tally put her hands flat on the table. "They're not asking the middle. They don't know how to ask the middle anything; nobody ever told them they could." She looked at me. "They're asking the other way. The way the singing came. Toward us." Her voice shook. "Is there one under mine?"

The long table sat at noon.

Kwame pointed. The broods talked. Voss wrote. The heavy queen lay with her great head through the doors of the hall, very still, listening to every word, and when Luna put the question to them, the heavy queen was the first to answer.

Low. Through the floor. Long.

Dot listened beside her for a long time before she translated.

She says go, said Dot. She says she knows what it is to be the shape. Under a world. For a long time. Waiting for someone to come. A pause. She says the keepers are young. All of them. Whoever's young they are. She says if a young asks is there one under mine, somebody should go and look.

"Even if there isn't," said Luna.

Especially if there isn't, said Dot. She says that's when you go.

Okafor drew up the teams that afternoon.

Not four. Twelve. Every team that had come home from the coloured-in worlds, and everyone they'd taught since. Genny's stone team, with Corwin, who could open a crack now, a hand's width, on his own. Mother and the General and Wynn. Garnet with Reed and Tally. Risa with Liam and Hana. Neve Ashworth, who'd never been a team leader in her life and who stood in the map room when Okafor read her name and went very red and said, "Ma'am," the way the cadets used to.

And me. With the Overseer.

"The ninth line's closest to the middle," said Okafor. "Closest to home. Closest to whatever they keep there." She looked at all of us. "Wardens. Hands. Whatever the middle hasn't stopped yet. I don't know what's on those worlds. Nobody does."

"The keepers do," I said.

"Then ask them," said Okafor. "Before you ask anything else." She put down her pencil. Very straight. "And if one of them's only hearing the shape. If there's nothing under. Somebody sits with it." She looked at Genny. "Until it asks you something."

"Then you answer," said Genny. "Once."

"Halloway's board," said Okafor. "I read it." She almost smiled. "In capitals."

The Overseer was waiting at the foot of the Scarecrow's ramp when I came down to the landing field.

It had been sitting by the heavy queen all morning. With its bread and the dog. It got up when I came. Very tall. Unfolding.

I would like to go first, it said. To the ninth line. Before the others.

"Why first?"

The Overseer looked at the sky. At nothing. At the place where the threads went up.

Because I taught them, it said. On the benches. Under the ring. Every keeper on the ninth line was a child on a bench once. I taught them their shape. A pause. If one of them only hears the shape under it, and not the heart, I would like to be the one who is there. It looked down at me. I owe it that. I owe them all that. I can only pay it one at a time.

The dog sat down on its foot.

"All right," I said.

Before we left, Mother came down to the landing field.

Not to go. She was going the next morning, with the General and Wynn, to the river world. She came down in her dark coat with Father's ring and a basket over her arm, and stood at the foot of the Scarecrow's ramp, and held the basket out. To the Overseer.

The Overseer looked at it.

What is it?

"Bread," said Mother. "And cheese. And two of the apples from the north orchard, which aren't ripe yet, so don't eat them, give them to the keeper if it's the kind that wants to hold something." She pushed the basket at it. "You don't know what you're going to find. Nobody does. You'll want something to do with your hands."

The Overseer took the basket. Very carefully. In both long grey hands. It looked down at it for a long time.

Nobody has given me a basket, it said.

"Well," said Mother. "Now somebody has."

She turned to me. Straightened my collar, which didn't need it, the way Luna had. They'd been doing that more, lately. All of them. As if, now that I said it out loud every night, they'd decided to say it back with their hands.

"Say it tonight," she said. "Wherever you are."

"I might be on the ninth line tonight."

"Then say it on the ninth line," said Mother. "It's as good a place as any. Better than some."

On the ninth line, on the first night, I said it.

Sitting on the ramp of the Scarecrow in the dark between worlds. To the Overseer, who was folded in the hold with the dog and Mother's basket, and who listened to all of it without saying anything. And then, because there was nobody else there, to everyone at home, one at a time, in order, out loud, into nothing.

The Overseer was quiet for a long time after.

Does it help? it said. To say it to people who cannot hear?

"I don't know," I said. "Father said it every night to people who were asleep. For years. And none of us ever knew." I looked out at the dark. "I used to think that meant it didn't count."

And now?

"Now I think he was practising," I said. "For when he could say it awake. He just ran out of time." I put my hands in my pockets. "I'm trying not to."

The Overseer didn't say anything.

But in the morning, when I came down to the hold, the basket was on its knee, and it was holding one of the unripe apples in its long grey hand, very carefully, as if it was something that might break.

The ninth line was cold.

Not cold like the ice world. Cold like a house nobody's lived in for a long time. Dark between the worlds. Very little light. The Drenn queen sang the rope down it slowly, carefully, the way you walk on boards you aren't sure of, and every world we passed had a tower on it, and every tower had a keeper, and every keeper was kneeling.

I could hear them. All of them. Their hearts slow and steady. Their hands on the ground. Listening down.

Some of them could hear something.

Some of them couldn't.

The first world Okafor had given us was ash.

Grey from pole to pole. Not grey like the towers. Grey like the inside of a stove the morning after. Flat, and soft, and very quiet. No wind. Nothing growing. A sky the colour of a bruise.

And in the middle of it, a tower.

And at its foot, a keeper. Kneeling.

It didn't look up when we came down. It didn't look up when I walked across the ash toward it, with the Overseer behind me, very tall, and the dog trotting at its heel and leaving small tracks.

It was listening.

With its long grey hands flat on the ground and its long grey face bowed so low it was almost touching the ash.

I stopped beside it.

I didn't fold anything. I didn't ask the tower anything. I didn't say anything.

I listened down with it.

Through the ash. Through the grey that the tower had grown up out of. Very deep. Very far. To where the queen would be.

There was no heartbeat.

There was the shape of one. Exactly as Reed had said. A space in the grey, the size and shape of something very large, curled round itself. Like a footprint in hardened mud. Like the hollow in a pillow after someone's got up.

She'd been there. A long time. And then she hadn't.

The tower had kept growing anyway. Out of the shape of her. Out of nothing.

The keeper lifted its face.

Very slowly. Out of the ash. And looked at me.

Is there one under mine?

I didn't answer.

I couldn't. I looked at it, kneeling there in the ash with its long grey hands spread flat, and I opened my mouth, and nothing came.

The Overseer knelt down.

All its long grey limbs folding. Very slowly. Beside the keeper. On the ash. So close their shoulders nearly touched.

There was, it said.

The keeper looked at it.

A long time ago. She was there. She is the shape you are hearing. The Overseer's voice was very quiet. Very thin. She is not there now. I do not know when. I do not know how long the tower has been growing out of where she was. A pause. I am sorry.

The keeper didn't move.

You taught me, it said. On the bench. Your voice.

Yes.

You taught me to stand here.

Yes.

The keeper looked down at the ash between its hands. At the shape under it, that it could hear, that had nothing in it.

Did you know? it said. When you taught me. That she was under here. That she would stop.

The Overseer was quiet for a very long time.

No, it said. I was not told what. Only to teach. A pause. But I did not ask. I could have asked. I did not know I could, and I did not try to find out. It looked down at the dog, which had lain down in the ash between them. That is the part I am sorry for.

The keeper didn't say anything.

It knelt in the ash for a long time. With the Overseer beside it. With me standing behind them both with nothing to do with my hands.

Then, very slowly, it lay down.

All the way. Its long grey body on the ash, curled round itself, in the shape of the space it could hear under the ground. Its face pressed to the grey.

As if, if it lay in the shape for long enough, something might fill it.

The Overseer didn't move.

It stayed kneeling beside the keeper. With one long grey hand, very slowly, lowered. Not onto the keeper. Onto the ash beside it. Flat. Close.

Waiting.

The dog got up, and turned round twice, and lay down against the keeper's back.

I went back to the ship.

I sat on the ramp. With the ash going grey and soft all round me and the bruise-coloured sky over everything and the two grey shapes and the dog on the ground at the foot of the tower.

Toby wasn't with us. Nobody to tell me about their hearts. So I listened myself.

The keeper's was very slow. Slower than it had been. And then, after a while, very slowly, not as slow.

The Overseer's was steady.

The dog's was asleep.

It was nearly dark when the keeper asked.

I heard it from the ramp. Not a voice. A small thing. Through the grey, through the ash, through the silver.

What do I do now?

The Overseer didn't answer at once.

I watched it think. Kneeling in the ash. With its hand flat beside the keeper's face.

Then it said:

There is a world. Very far. Where a queen lies on red glass beside a ship. She was the shape under a world for a long time. Her son kept the top of it. He still does. He hums to her every night. A pause. She has asked for the keepers to come. All of them. Even the ones with nothing under them.

The keeper didn't move.

Especially those, said the Overseer.

It took a long time to get the keeper up the ramp.

Not because it wouldn't come. Because it couldn't. It had knelt at the foot of that tower so long its long grey legs didn't know how to walk anywhere else. The Overseer walked beside it. One step. Then another. With its long grey hand under the keeper's elbow. The way Ruth walked the ones who'd just woken, on the long ward, the first time they stood.

At the top of the ramp the keeper stopped. And turned round. And looked back at the tower.

Very tall. Very grey. Grown up out of the shape of a queen who wasn't there.

Will it fall? it said. If I go?

"Would you like it to?"

The keeper looked at the tower for a long time.

No, it said. It is the only thing she made. Even if she did not mean to. A pause. I would like it to stand. So the shape has something on top of it.

So I didn't fold it.

We left it standing. On the ash world. Over the shape of a queen. Very still.

Not pushing anything.

The other teams came home over the next three days.

Not all at once. In ones and twos, as their worlds were done. Garnet and Reed and Tally from a world of reeds where the keeper heard a heart, very faint, very slow, and knelt for two days while Garnet opened the grey a hand's width at a time, until the queen came up through the reeds like a great green lantern and the keeper put its face against her and didn't move. Mother and Wynn and the General from a world of rivers where there were two keepers, not one, and one heard a heart and one heard the shape, and they'd been standing at the feet of the same tower for so long that the one with nothing under it wouldn't leave the other, and Mother brought them both home.

Genny and Corwin from a stone world with a heart.

Neve Ashworth from a world of wind with only the shape. She came home with the keeper walking beside her, very slowly, with Neve's coat round its long grey shoulders because the wind had been so cold. Neve was the colour of chalk and very steady and she said, in the map room, to Okafor, "I sat with it until it asked me something. Then I answered." A pause. "It asked me if I'd ever lost anyone." Another pause. "I said yes. A hundred and twelve. On one ward. In one night." She swallowed. "It said that was a great many. I said yes. It said it had only lost one. I said that was a great many too."

Okafor looked at her for a long time.

"Ashworth," she said. "You're a team leader."

"Ma'am."

"I wasn't asking."

Garnet told the reed world at the kitchen table. The way she told everything now. With her drawing board open and the dog under her chair and a page she wasn't going to let me see until it was finished.

The keeper there had heard a heart. Very faint. So faint it hadn't been sure. It had knelt at the foot of its tower for a day and a night before Garnet got there, listening, and when she came across the reeds toward it, it hadn't looked up at all.

"It was frightened," said Garnet. "That it was wrong. That if it looked up it'd lose it." She sharpened her pencil. "So I didn't make it look up. I knelt down too. And Reed put her ear on the ground. And Reed said, Yes. She's there. She's very tired." A pause. "Once."

"And the keeper heard her?"

"The keeper started crying," said Garnet. "I didn't know they could. Tally didn't either. She wrote it down." She bent over the page. "It took two days. I opened it a hand at a time, because every time I opened more the queen got frightened and pulled in, like a snail. So I'd stop. And Reed would listen. And when the queen stopped being frightened, I'd open another hand." She was quiet. "On the second night, the keeper started singing to her. Through the gap. It didn't know any songs. It just sang the note Tally answered with. At the long table. The one that went all the way up the threads."

"It is us," I said.

"That one," said Garnet. "It must have heard it. When it went past. And kept it." She turned the page round.

It was the reed world. The tower, half opened, very neatly, a hand at a time. And coming up out of the gap, a great green shape like a lantern. And kneeling at the foot of it, very small against the green, the keeper with its face turned up. And beside it, on the reeds, three small figures with their heads together, and one of them with her ear to the ground.

"That's the moment," said Garnet. "When she came up and the keeper saw her." She took the page back. "I wanted to draw its face. I couldn't. I tried six times."

"Why not?"

Garnet thought about it.

"Because I'd never seen it before," she said. "On anyone. I didn't know what it looked like." She put her pencil down. "I'll know next time."

Eleven keepers came to Avalon in three days.

Every one of them with nothing under it. Or with two of them, one with and one without, who wouldn't be parted. They came off the ships slowly, the way the ash keeper had, not knowing how to walk anywhere but in circles round a tower, with whoever had brought them walking beside them with a hand under an elbow.

And every one of them went to the heavy queen.

She lay on the red glass beside the Ground. Where she always lay. With her great head turned toward the sky, listening for her son under the ring.

When the first keeper came, the ash one, walking very slowly with the Overseer beside it and the dog at its heel, she turned her head.

Down. From the sky. To the keeper.

And looked at it for a long time.

Then she made a sound. Not mine. I'd heard her say mine to her son, and it wasn't that. Lower. Wider. Something I'd never heard a queen make before.

Dot was beside her. Dot listened for a long time.

She says she does not know whose you are, said Dot. Very quietly. She says it does not matter. She says lie down.

The keeper looked up at her. At the heavy queen. Grey. Enormous. Shaped by a world so heavy that standing up on it was a thing that took a thousand years to learn.

Then it lay down.

On the red glass. Against her side. In the shape of the hollow it had heard under its tower.

And the heavy queen curled round it.

Very slowly. All of her. The way she'd curled round her own son's tower, under the ring, for longer than anyone remembered, before we came and told her he was up there.

And hummed.

People came.

Nobody told them to. Nobody ever did, on Avalon. They just came. Down the long road from the town, and up from the lakes, and in from the plain on the train, and stood at the edge of the red glass in the evening and looked at the heavy queen curled round a grey thing that had once stood over a world and kept it.

Some of them had been in the halls. Some of them had been on benches. Some of them had been on Earth, three million of them, in domes, with slivers in housings at the backs of their necks, and had been told what to do every day of their lives by something they couldn't see.

They stood at the edge of the glass and looked.

Nobody said anything.

Then Sera came down from the forge with a barrow.

It was full of stones. River stones, smooth and round, from the stream behind the forge. She'd had them in the coals all afternoon. They glowed very faintly in the dusk, orange at the edges. She wheeled the barrow out onto the red glass without asking anyone and started putting them down, one at a time, along the row of keepers. One beside each long grey hand.

"The fire one glows," she said. When I came down. Without looking up. "Since its mother. Toby says these ones are cold. All the way through." She put down another stone. "So."

The keeper from the ash world looked at the stone beside its hand for a long time.

Then it put its hand on it.

Flat. The way Tally put out her hand. The way the fire keeper had put its hands on the black crust.

And left it there.

Behind me, at the edge of the glass, I heard somebody start crying. A man from the east locks. I didn't know his name. He had a pale mark at the back of his neck where a housing had come off. He stood there with his hands over his face, and the woman beside him put her arm round him, and neither of them said anything.

Then a girl came out of the crowd. Very small. From Halden, I thought. She walked out onto the red glass, very carefully, the way you walk on ice, and went to the end of the row, where the last keeper lay with nothing beside its hand, because Sera had run out of stones.

She took off her scarf. It was red. Knitted. Too big for her.

She put it on the keeper's long grey hand. And went back to the edge of the glass, very quickly, and hid behind her mother.

The keeper didn't move.

But in the morning the scarf was still on its hand. And its hand was closed round it.

By the third evening there were eleven of them.

Lying against her side. In a long row on the red glass. Grey, all of them, long and thin, with their faces turned in toward her. Some of them asleep. Some of them not. The one from the river world with its twin beside it, who'd had a heart under its tower and had come anyway, because the other wouldn't go without it.

And the heavy queen curled round all of them. Humming.

And under the ring, very far, her son humming back.

Dory came down to see them on the third evening.

With Ash, and Pebble, and the old brown dog, which had decided its place now was halfway between the Overseer and wherever Dory was. She stood at the edge of the red glass for a long time. Looking at the row of keepers. At the heavy queen curled round them.

Then she came back up the hill and sat down on the top step of the porch beside me.

"Papa."

"Yes."

"The ones lying down." She pulled her knees up. "They haven't got mothers."

"Some of them had. A long time ago."

"But not now."

"Not now."

Dory thought about this for a long time. The way she thought about everything. Very seriously. With her chin on her knees.

"The big queen isn't their mother," she said.

"No."

"But she said lie down." Dory looked at the red glass. At the long curled shape of the heavy queen in the dusk, and the row of grey shapes against her side. "And they did." She was quiet. "So is she?"

I didn't answer at once.

"I think," I said, "she's deciding to be."

Dory considered this.

"There's a word for it," she said. "The young have one. For a queen who's yours but didn't have you." She said it. The brood-word. The one she'd said to our queen on the porch, the day she was born, before she had more than a handful of human words. It came out of her small and low, like a hum. "That's what the big queen is. To them. Now."

"Yes."

"Can you decide that?"

"I think so," I said. "Grandma decided it. About Wren. And Toby. And Tally and Reed and Jory and Moon." I looked at the porch. At the rail, where Tally was sitting with her blanket round her, writing something in a notebook Garnet had given her. "And they decided back."

Dory was quiet for a long time.

"Then the middle could have one," she said. "If somebody decided."

I didn't say anything.

I sat on the top step beside my daughter, who was five and looked ten and held things the way a net holds, and I didn't say anything at all for a long time.

Then I said, "Who'd decide?"

Dory looked at me as if I'd asked something very stupid.

"Whoever it asked," she said. "When it comes down again." She stood up. Brushed off her knees. "It'll come down again. It's looking for something. Grandma told it what." She went to the door. Then stopped, and turned round. "You haven't said it yet tonight."

"Everyone's not here yet."

"I'm here," said Dory. "Say mine first. Then you can do everyone else in order."

So I said hers first.

I said everyone else's in order.

Mother in Father's chair. Luna, Sera, Risa, Hana. Genny with her thick brood book open on her knees, writing SHAPE (no heart). Do not tell them it is nothing. It is not nothing. It is the shape of someone. Garnet with her new sheet. Liam and Anja and Rory. Toby, who'd come up from the ward at dusk and said there were eleven new hearts on the red glass and all of them were slower than they should be and the heavy queen's was keeping time for every one. Wren. Tally and Reed and Jory and Moon. Ash, and Trevor, and small Sigmund, and Efua on the bottom step with her hand out, flat, holding the air still so she could hear every word.

And Kwame, asleep on Hana's shoulder, who woke up when I said his name and pointed at me, very solemnly. Which everyone had agreed counted.

Then I went up on Father's roof.

And listened.

To the ninth line. Where a hundred and four keepers were kneeling now, Wren said. More every hour. Some hearing hearts. Some hearing shapes. All of them listening down.

And to the middle.

It had gone home. Back to the end of the ninth line. Back to the place in the middle of Garnet's sheet where she'd left room.

It wasn't leaning. It wasn't coming down. It wasn't still.

It was moving. Very slowly. Round and round. In the place where it was.

Like the keeper on the ash world had, Reed told me after, in the first hour, before it lay down. Circling. Listening down. At the foot of a tower that had grown up out of a shape.

Looking for the heart under it.

And not hearing one.

I said it again. Quietly. Up into the dark.

It couldn't hear. Nobody can hear my silver. I know that.

But Dory said somebody would have to decide.

And I've never been very good at waiting to be asked.

Days 2741–2748. Kneeling.

The middle stopped at every tower on the ninth line on its way home and listened, and the keepers, who'd never heard it listen, knelt and listened down. Some heard a heart. Some heard only the shape where one had been, and asked up the threads toward us: is there one under mine? The heavy queen said go, especially if there isn't. On the ash world the Overseer knelt beside a keeper it had taught and told it there had been, and that it was sorry it never asked. Eleven keepers with nothing under them came to Avalon and lay down against the heavy queen, who said she didn't know whose they were and it didn't matter. Neve Ashworth is a team leader. Dory says the middle could have a mother if somebody decided. It's circling now, at the end of the ninth line, listening down for a heart. I said it into the dark again.