Chapter 342 The Shape of What Was

The queens woke on the sixth morning.

Not all at once. One at a time. The way the lights come on in a town at dusk, a window here and a window there, until you look up and the whole hill is lit.

Our queen first. At the top of the garden wall. I was sitting on the porch steps with my coffee before the sun was up, because I hadn't slept, and I felt her wake. A shift in the silver. A lifting. Like a breath taken in after a long time of not breathing.

Then the heavy queen. On the red glass. Very slowly. Her great head coming up off the glass where she'd lain curled round the keepers for six days without moving, and turning, toward the sky, toward the ring, listening for her son.

He was still humming. She lay back down.

Then the rest. The Drenn queen in her hall under the hill. The Kethri queens on the wind past the river. The marsh queen. The coral queen, deep in her pools past the coast. The red and the blue and the small green one at the wall. The forest queen and the hill queen, side by side on the red glass, uncurling.

The old queen last. On her mountain. At noon.

She didn't lift her head. She opened her eyes. And I felt her look south, over the canyon and the river and the plain, toward the town.

Toward us.

"She wants to know what happened," said Dot.

On the porch. At noon. Through the wood of the rail, the way Dot spoke when she had something from a queen and couldn't wait for me to come to the map room.

"All of it," said Dot. "While they slept." A pause. "She says she felt the one note. In her sleep. From here." Another pause. "She says she would like to know who sang it, and why, and whether they are all right."

So I told her.

Not with my mouth. She was too far. Through our queen, at the garden wall, who listened to all of it with her great head on the warm stone and her eyes half shut, and sent it north. The whole of it. Neve, on the black world. The ring, closing. The young from the twelfth world walking in front, with the black at their heels. The Overseer, at the foot of the ramp, putting back its long grey head and singing the note the houses made. The Scarecrow remembering. Falling down the line like a stone down a well.

Luna's ice. Risa's thunder. Sera's star, the size of a seed, going out of her palm in a line.

What I did. All of it. Three hundred and twelve, between us. And that I'd stopped noticing.

Five young who stopped walking because they could.

Neve's hands.

The Overseer on the red glass, with Mother holding it for twelve hours. The houses, in its mouth. Return. Or be corrected.

Our queen didn't say anything for a long time after I'd finished.

Then she lifted her head.

She says, said our queen, you were not supposed to stop noticing.

"I know."

She says she does not blame you. She says that is what the houses make. Things that stop noticing. A pause. She says that is the only thing she is afraid of. More than the black. More than the correctors. Our queen looked at me. She says notice again. Tonight. On the porch. Notice every one.

I didn't say anything.

And she says, said our queen, bring her the one with the hands.

Neve's hands were still black.

Not to the wrist now. Dory had held them for an hour every afternoon since we came home, the way she held my fingers, and the silver had started to seep back in. From the wrist. Slowly. A path at a time. Into the heel of each hand. Into the palm.

It stopped at the knuckles.

All ten fingers stayed dark. Every afternoon. However long Dory held them. Dory sat on the end of Neve's bed in the ward with her small hands round Neve's long ones and her jaw set and her face going very white, and the silver came up to the knuckles and stopped there like water against a dam.

"It's all right," said Neve. On the fourth day. When Dory let go and sat back and looked at her fingers with her mouth pressed tight. "I can move them. I can hold things." She held a pen, to show her. "I can write."

"You can't feel your patients," said Dory.

Neve didn't say anything.

Ruth had told Dory that. Without meaning to. On the second afternoon, in the doorway, when she thought Dory was asleep on the end of the bed. She'd said it to Halloway, very quietly. She takes the pulse with her silver. She always has. She puts her fingers on a wrist and she can feel the whole body. It's why she's so good. It's why I gave her the ward.

And then, quieter: She can't do that now.

Dory had heard.

"You can't feel them," she said again. To Neve. Very steadily. "You put your fingers on them and you used to feel the whole of them. And now you can only feel their skin."

"Yes," said Neve.

Dory looked at her own hands.

"I'm not strong enough," she said. "I've been trying. It goes to your knuckles and it stops." She swallowed. "I can do everything. Papa says. Everything everyone can do." Her voice wobbled, and she stopped it. "I can't do this."

Neve looked at her for a long time.

Then she reached out and put her dark fingers on Dory's wrist.

"I can still feel your skin," she said. "It's warm. You've been holding my hands for an hour and you're tired and your heart's going a bit fast." She smiled. "I don't need the silver for that. I took pulses with my fingers on the Program floors for years before anyone let me near the silver."

Dory didn't smile back.

"It's not the same," she said.

"No," said Neve. "It's not."

I carried her up the mountain.

Neve. On the seventh morning. With Dory, because Dory said she was coming, and nobody argued, because nobody had argued with Dory in a week. With Genny, because Genny had written forty pages in the brood book about the black since the fire world and said if anyone was going to understand what the queens did, she wanted to be there to write it down. With Ruth, because it was her ward.

I asked the air and it held us. Five of us. North. Over the canyon. Over the river.

To the terrace.

The old queen was awake. Her great head on the warm stone. Her pale clear eyes open. Beside the puddle of glass where Sera had held the star, which had cooled to a smooth black mirror the width of the terrace and reflected the sky.

And on the slope below, waiting, the forest queen and the hill queen.

They'd come up in the night. Dot said. On their own. The forest queen uncoiling up the mountain like water going the wrong way. The hill queen beside her, grey and gold like dry grass, slower, stopping often. They'd been under the black for days. Neither of them had climbed anything since.

They lay on the slope just below the edge of the terrace, side by side, with their heads up. Watching us come down.

I set us down on the terrace.

Neve stood very still. With her dark hands at her sides. Looking at the old queen.

She'd never been to the mountain. She'd come to Avalon from the Program floors, with a chart and a hundred and twelve names, and she'd gone straight to the ward and hardly come out. She knew the queens the way you know the weather. Something that was always there. Something you didn't talk to.

The old queen looked at her.

Show me, she said.

Neve didn't know what that meant. She looked at me.

"Your hands," I said.

She held them out.

Palms down. Then palms up. Ten dark fingers. The silver stopped at the knuckles like a tide line.

The old queen looked at them for a long time.

Who held them open? she said.

"Me," said Dory.

The old queen turned her pale eyes on Dory.

Every day?

"Every afternoon. For an hour." Dory lifted her chin. "It stops at the knuckles. I can't make it go further." A pause. "I can do everything. I can't do this."

The old queen looked at her for a very long time.

You cannot do it, she said, because it is not a thing for one.

She turned her head. Slowly. Down. To the slope below the terrace. To the forest queen and the hill queen.

And sang something. Low. To them.

The forest queen answered first.

She came up over the edge of the terrace. Slowly. Uncoiling. Long and green and brown, moving the way water moves over moss, until her great head was level with Neve's face.

Neve didn't step back. I'll write that down for her. She didn't step back.

The forest queen looked at her hands.

And made a sound. Hoarse. Very low. The voice of something that hadn't used it much, and had only just started again.

Dot wasn't with us. I didn't need Dot.

I know this, said the forest queen.

Under the black, she said. For many days. With my young in my coils. I lay in it. I listened to it. Her great green head swayed, very slightly. I learned its shape.

"It's nothing," said Genny. Very quietly. She had the brood book open on her knees already, sitting on the warm stone with her pen. "That's what I wrote. Forty pages. It's not grey. It's not silver. It's not anything. It's a place where something was and isn't."

No, said the forest queen.

Genny's pen stopped.

Not nothing, said the forest queen. I thought so too. The first day. The second. She looked at Neve's hands. On the third day I understood. It is not a place where nothing is. It is a place that has been taught to stay empty.

Nobody said anything.

Like the silver at the bottom of the correctors, said the forest queen. Burned so it cannot hear. Not dead. Taught to be deaf. A pause. The black is the same. It is taught. Every grain of it. Stay empty. Take, and stay empty. Over and over. The one note. Her great head came closer to Neve's dark fingers. That is why holding them open is not enough. You hold the room open. The room is still taught to stay empty. The moment you let go, it remembers what it was taught.

Genny was writing very fast.

"So you have to—" She stopped. "You have to teach it something else."

Yes.

"What?"

The hill queen answered. From the slope. Grey and gold, like dry grass. Very quiet. She'd hardly made a sound since we brought her up out of the hole on the second black world. Toby said her heart was still so slow he sometimes lost it.

What it was, said the hill queen. Before.

The black does not know what it took, said the hill queen. It does not remember. It has been taught not to. A pause. But the hand remembers. The bone remembers. The skin remembers. Every part of her hand that is not silver has held the silver for her whole life. It knows the shape. It knows exactly where every path went.

She lifted her head. Slowly. Toward Neve.

We cannot put the silver back, she said. Not one of us. Not the old one. Not the boy who feels everything. Her pale gold eyes went to me. But we can sing the shape. To the empty place. Every path. Exactly as it was. And if enough of us sing it, all at once, the empty place will hear a louder note than the one it was taught.

"And then?" said Ruth. From the edge of the terrace. Very tight.

And then it will remember it is allowed to be full, said the hill queen.

"How many is enough?" I said.

The old queen answered.

All of us, she said.

It took until noon.

They came up the mountain one at a time. The way they'd come the first time, to give me what they gave me. Our queen, gold and silver, on her ledge below the terrace. The heavy queen, from the red glass, up the slope like a hill moving. The Drenn queen. The marsh queen. The Kethri queens on the wind. The coral queen, in her pool of carried seawater. The red, the blue, the small green one. Even the reed queen, a small green light in the hollow under the heavy queen's jaw, brighter now than she had been.

Every queen on Avalon. Six days after they'd given everything they had to give. Tired. Some of them very tired. The heavy queen stopped three times on the slope and lay down and didn't move for a long while before she got up again.

They came anyway.

Neve sat down on the warm stone.

In the middle of the terrace. Where I'd stood, and Luna, and Risa, and Sera. Cross-legged. With her dark hands in her lap. Very straight.

The forest queen curled round her.

Slowly. All of her. Long and green and brown. Round and round. The way she'd curled round her young under the black. Until Neve was sitting in the middle of a great green coil with only her head and shoulders showing.

And her hands, held out in front of her. On the forest queen's back.

"Dory," said the old queen.

Dory went.

She climbed over the forest queen's coils without asking, the way she climbed onto everything, and sat down in front of Neve. And took Neve's dark hands in hers. And held.

Not the silver. There wasn't any past the knuckles. The paths. The empty paths. Every one. The way she held my fingers. The way she'd held the whole house still on the morning she was born.

"Genny," said the old queen.

Genny put down the brood book.

She climbed in beside Dory. And put her hand flat on the back of Neve's right hand. And listened. Twice.

"I can hear it," she said. Very quietly. "The bone. Where the paths went." She swallowed. "It does remember. I can ask it. It'll tell me." Her eyes were wet. "It's been waiting for someone to ask."

"You," said the old queen. To me.

I knelt behind Neve.

And put my hands on her shoulders. And shut my eyes.

And felt.

Every grain of her. The bones of her hands and the skin over them and the blood moving in them and the silver, bright, branching, everywhere in her except past the knuckles. And past the knuckles, the black. The empty paths. Every one exactly where it had always been. Taught to stay empty.

I didn't try to fill them. I couldn't. The hill queen was right. Nothing could put the silver back.

I just felt them. All of them. As hard as I could. Every path. Every branching. So that whatever the queens sang, I could feel where it went.

And the queens sang.

Not the one note. Not the great singing, all the notes at once, the way they'd sung to give me what they gave me. Not a song at all.

A shape.

I felt it come. From every queen on the mountain. Into the forest queen's coils. Into Neve. Into her hands. Into the black.

A shape. Very precise. Very careful. The shape of a hand. Not any hand. Hers. Every path the silver had ever taken through it. Where it branched at the base of each finger. Where it ran fine as hair under each nail. Where it came together in the pad of each fingertip in a small bright knot, the way it did in everyone who'd ever been finished. Every one. Exactly.

The bone had told Genny. Genny had told the queens. The queens sang it back.

Into the black.

It didn't change at first.

The black lay in Neve's fingers the way it had for eleven days. Dark. Empty. Taught.

The queens kept singing.

The shape. Over and over. Louder. Not louder like sound. Louder like weight. Like the heavy queen's hum, coming up through the stone into your feet. More and more of it. All of them. All at once. Pressing the shape of Neve's hand into the place where her hand's silver had been, over and over, the way the heavy young pressed into the black on the dead forest world, a foot at a time, until it gave.

And I felt it give.

Not the silver. The teaching.

The thing the black had been taught. Stay empty. Over and over. The one note. In every grain of it.

And over it, louder, every queen on Avalon, singing a shape.

This is what you were. This is where she went. This is how she branched. This is the knot at the end of each finger. This is what you were before anyone taught you anything.

You are allowed to be full.

The black in Neve's left forefinger went grey.

Then pale.

Then, very faintly, silver.

Neve made a sound.

Not a word. Not a cry. A sound like someone who's been holding their breath under water for a long time coming up into the air.

And the silver came in.

Not seeping. Not the slow way it came under Dory's hands, a path at a time. All at once. From the knuckles. Up every path that the queens had sung. Into every finger. Branching. Fine as hair. Into the pads. Into the small bright knots at the end of each one.

Lit.

All ten.

The queens stopped singing.

Not all at once. One at a time. The way they'd woken. The heavy queen last. Her great hum going down, and down, and stopping, and the stone under us going still.

Neve sat in the middle of the forest queen's coils with her hands held out in front of her. Lit. Every finger. Silver branching under the skin like frost on a window.

She didn't say anything.

She turned them over. Palms up. Palms down.

Then she reached out. Very slowly. And put two fingers on the inside of Dory's wrist.

And shut her eyes.

"Your heart's going fast," said Neve. Very quietly. "You've been holding for an hour. You're tired. You're very tired." A pause. "Your silver's bright. Brighter than anyone's I've ever felt. It's tired too. It's been holding too." Another pause. "You had porridge for breakfast. With honey. Too much honey."

Dory stared at her.

"You can feel that?"

"I can feel all of you," said Neve. And opened her eyes. And they were wet. "The whole of you. Everything. The way I used to."

Dory didn't say anything.

She looked at Neve's hand on her wrist for a long time. Lit. Every finger.

Then she started to cry.

Not loudly. Dory never cried loudly. She sat in the middle of the forest queen's coils with Neve's fingers on her wrist and cried without making any sound at all, and Neve put her other arm round her, and Genny put her arms round both of them, and Ruth, at the edge of the terrace, put her hand over her mouth and turned round and looked at the view for a long time.

"It wasn't me," said Dory. Into Neve's shoulder. "I couldn't."

"It was you," said Neve. "And Genny. And your father. And every queen on Avalon." She held her tighter. "It wasn't a thing for one. She said."

The young one held, said the old queen. To me. Very tired. Her great head on the warm stone, her eyes half shut. Every day. For eleven days. Kept the room open. So the shape had somewhere to go. A pause. Without that, we would have sung into a shut door.

"Tell her," I said.

She heard, said the old queen. And shut her eyes.

The forest queen uncurled.

Slowly. Letting Neve go. And lay along the slope below the terrace, very tired, with her great green head on the stone. The hill queen beside her.

Genny was writing again. Very fast. The brood book on her knees.

"Taught to stay empty," she said. As she wrote it. "Can be taught otherwise. Needs: someone to hold it open. Someone to ask the bone. Someone to feel the paths. And enough queens to sing the shape louder than the black." She looked up. At the forest queen. "Is it only hands? Only people? Or could you—"

She stopped.

The forest queen opened her eyes.

And looked north. Past the mountains. Past the edge of the world. Toward somewhere very far away. Toward a world on Garnet's sheet that was a black circle with a small green dot in the middle.

My forest, she said.

Nobody said anything.

It is taught, said the forest queen. All of it. Every grain. Stay empty. A pause. But every grain of it remembers. The trees. The river. The moss. Her great head came up off the stone. If enough of us sang the shape of a forest—

She didn't finish.

She didn't have to.

I carried them home at dusk.

Neve with her hands in her lap, lit, turning them over and over. Dory asleep against her. Genny with the brood book clutched to her chest. Ruth, very quiet.

Halfway home, over the river, Neve said, "There's a man on the ward with a heart that skips. From the east locks. Since the housing came off. Ruth's been worried." She turned her hands over. "I'm going to go and sit with him tonight. And feel it."

"You should sleep," said Ruth.

"I should," said Neve. "I'm going to go and sit with him."

Ruth didn't argue.

The Overseer was awake when we came onto the ward.

In the small room at the end with the window. Sitting up, for the first time, with its long grey legs folded under it on a bed far too short for it and the dog asleep across its feet. Mother was in the chair. She'd been in the chair, Halloway said, most of four days.

Neve went to it first. Before the man with the skipping heart. Before anyone. She walked into the small room and held out her hands.

Lit. All ten.

The Overseer looked at them for a long time.

The black, it said.

"Taught to stay empty," said Neve. "The forest queen said. And taught otherwise. By every queen on Avalon singing the shape of what was there before." She sat down on the edge of the bed. "It remembered. It was allowed to be full."

The Overseer didn't say anything.

Then it put one long grey hand flat on its own chest. Where the houses had reached into it. Where Mother had held them off for twelve hours on the red glass.

They are still here, it said. Very quietly. A little. The shape of their hand. Where they took hold. A pause. I was made to be picked up. Every part of me was taught it. That is why they could.

Mother looked up.

Could it be, said the Overseer, taught otherwise?

Nobody answered at once.

Neve put her lit fingers on its long grey wrist. And shut her eyes. And felt. For a long time.

"I don't know," she said at last. "I can feel where they took hold. It's like a bruise. All through you." She opened her eyes. "But I can feel something else too. Under it. Older." She looked at the Overseer. "You were something before they made you. Weren't you? Like the correctors. Like the voice. Something with a shape."

The Overseer looked at her for a very long time.

I do not remember, it said.

"The bone does," said Neve. "Genny says. It always does." She stood up. "Ask the queens. When they've rested. Ask them to find it."

The Overseer looked at Mother.

Would you ask them? it said. For me?

"No," said Mother. And took its hand. "You will. And I'll come with you."

Sera was at the forge when I got back.

Not working. Sitting on the anvil, the way Ash sat on her bucket, with her hands between her knees. The fire was banked. The forge was nearly dark. Ash was asleep on a sack of charcoal in the corner with the old brown dog curled against her back.

"Neve?" said Sera.

"All ten."

Sera shut her eyes. And let her breath out. And didn't say anything for a while.

I sat down on the bucket.

"The old queen said I wasn't supposed to stop noticing," I said. "On the black world. When I let them go. She said that's what the houses make. Things that stop noticing."

Sera opened her eyes.

"I didn't stop," she said.

I looked at her.

"The line," said Sera. "Out of my hand. Through the twenty." She turned her hands over in the dim light. "I felt every one. All the way through. I didn't stop. I couldn't." Her voice was very steady. "I thought that meant there was something wrong with me. That I couldn't just do it. That I had to feel it the whole time."

"There's nothing wrong with you."

"I know that now," said Sera. "She said." She looked at the banked fire. "I think that's why it went out when I told it. The star. Every time. Because I was noticing." A pause. "If I ever stop, I don't think it will."

Neither of us said anything for a long time.

Then I said, "Help me."

"With what?"

"Noticing. Tonight. On the porch." I looked at my hands. "I can't do three hundred. I tried, on the way home. I lost count at forty. I can't feel what they were before. I can't name them. They didn't have names." I swallowed. "I don't know how to notice something that's had everything taken out of it on purpose."

Sera got down off the anvil.

She came and crouched in front of me. And took my hands. Both of them. All ten fingers lit.

"You don't do three hundred," she said. "You do one. The first one. On the fire world. The one that walked into you." She held my hands very tightly. "And you remember there was a piece of silver at the bottom of it that used to be able to hear. And somebody burned it. On purpose. A long time ago." A pause. "And you're sorry. For that one. That's all."

"And the rest?"

"The rest is the same one," said Sera. "Over and over. That's what they made. The same one, over and over." Her eyes were very bright in the dark forge. "So you only have to be sorry once. Properly. And mean it for all of them."

I didn't say anything.

In the corner, Ash woke up. And looked at us. With her hinge face. Deciding.

"Is Papa sad?" she said. To the dog.

The dog didn't answer.

"He's noticing," said Sera. Without turning round. "Go back to sleep."

Ash considered this. Then lay back down.

"That's allowed," she told the dog.

The answer to the houses went that night.

Not from me. From the long table.

They'd sat all afternoon while we were on the mountain. Kwame at the head on Hana's knee, pointing. Voss at the clerk's desk. A seat for every brood. And the keepers, for the first time, eleven of them, sitting along the wall in a row on the floor, because they didn't know how to sit in chairs, with the ash keeper at the end with its red scarf.

And Selwyn. At the end of the table. Where he'd sat since he came to Avalon. Writing names.

Luna told me after. On the porch.

"They read it out," she said. "What the houses said. Through the Overseer. Return. Or be corrected." She was quiet. "Nobody said anything for a long time. And then the ash keeper stood up."

"What did it say?"

"It said no," said Luna. "That's all. One word." She looked at her hands. "And then every brood said it. One after another. Through Dot. Through Juno. Through the seed. The Drenn. The Kethri. The Karst. The Teeming, along the rim, all at once. The heavy young, which took a very long time." A pause. "And then the people. Carver. Ashby. Stillwater. The east locks. Halden. Everyone. No."

"And Selwyn?"

Luna was quiet for a moment.

"Selwyn stood up last," she said. "And said, They said the human world. By the paper it signed." She looked at me. "He signed that paper, Lucas. His name's on it. He said, There are still people on Earth. Not everyone came. They'll go to Earth first."

Nobody had thought of it. Not that way. Not yet.

"What did the table say?"

"It said warn them," said Luna.

Ruan sent it from the Meridian.

At midnight. On the old Council band. The one the Meridian's relay had been built to hear, and that nobody had ever turned off. Okafor wrote it. Selwyn read it. Because it was his paper, he said, and his name, and if anyone on Earth was going to believe it they'd believe a Deputy Chair of Health from Level Sixty-two before they'd believe a sergeant from a world they'd never seen.

He read it very steadily. In the map room. With the whole long table standing behind him. Into the relay.

I'm not going to write it all down. It wasn't long. It said what the houses were. What correction was. What the black did. It said, If something comes, do not wait for it to ask anything. It will not. Come to Avalon. Every dome. Every level. However you can.

It said, We will come for you.

Then Ruan cut the band.

And we waited.

I said it that night. On the porch. Late.

And I noticed. Every one. The way the old queen asked.

Mother in Father's chair. Luna, Sera, Risa, Hana. The twins. Liam and Anja and Rory. Toby. Wren. Genny with the brood book, still writing. Garnet asleep on the rail with the dog. Tally and Reed and Jory and Moon. Ash and Trevor and small Sigmund. Efua on the bottom step with her hand out flat, holding the air still to hear. Kwame asleep.

Dory, last, because she'd asked to be last tonight. Asleep in Mother's lap. With her hands, in her sleep, held out in front of her, very slightly. As if she was still holding something open.

And Neve wasn't on the porch. She was on the ward. With her lit fingers on the wrist of a man from the east locks whose heart skipped.

I said hers too. Into the dark. Toward the ward.

I noticed every one.

The answer came at dawn.

Not from the houses. From Earth.

On the Council band. Through the Meridian's relay. Ruan woke Okafor and Okafor woke me and we stood in the map room in our coats with the big screen lit and the band hissing. And a voice came out of it. A woman's. Young. Very frightened. Not anyone we knew.

"Avalon," she said. "This is the north dome relay. Level Forty. I'm the only one on shift." A pause. The hiss. "I heard your message. I don't know if you're real." Another pause. "There's something over the dome."

Okafor leaned toward the screen.

"It came in the night," said the woman. "It's very big. It's not grey. It's—" Her voice cracked. "It's black. And it's not doing anything. It's just there. Over the north dome. Waiting."

The band hissed.

"Please," she said. "If you're real. You said you'd come."

Days 2772–2776. The Shape of What Was.

The queens woke on the sixth day. The old queen said I wasn't supposed to stop noticing, and to bring her the one with the hands. Dory had held Neve's paths open eleven days; the silver stopped at the knuckles. The forest queen, who lay under the black for days, said it isn't nothing: it's taught to stay empty, and the hand remembers its shape. Every queen on Avalon climbed the mountain tired and sang the shape of Neve's hand into the black, with Dory holding, Genny asking the bone, and me feeling every path, until the black remembered it was allowed to be full. All ten fingers lit. She felt Dory's pulse and knew about the honey. The forest queen looked toward her forest. The long table said no, every brood and every town. Selwyn said they'll go to Earth first; Selwyn read the warning. At dawn, Earth answered: something black over the north dome. Waiting.