Chapter 352 Left Behind

The Hathri sang to the ground every night.

That was the first thing I learned about them, when they came off Holt's six ships onto the red glass, six thousand one hundred and four of them, out of nine hundred thousand. Before I made them a steppe. Before the hill queen came and sang it the shape of home. They stood on the red glass in the dusk in their long felted coats with their children on their backs, and as the sun went down, every one of them knelt.

And put one hand flat on the glass.

And sang.

Not loud. Low. A sound like wind going over a great deal of grass a very long way off. Every one of them. All at once. For about as long as it takes to boil a kettle.

Then they got up and went on with whatever they'd been doing.

"It's what they do," Holt said. When I asked. He was standing at the edge of the red glass with his hands in his pockets, watching them. He hadn't slept since the Hathri world. He didn't look like he ever would again. "Every night. At sundown. Wherever they are. They sing to the ground." He looked at the glass. "To let it know they're still on it."

They'd been singing to the ground on Avalon for nearly a year.

Every night. On the steppe I'd made them in the far west past the salt, with grass to the edge of the sky. Six thousand of them, on a grassland the size of a country. Too big for them. I knew. I'd made it that big anyway. So there was room.

On the first night after Maura's kitchen, something sang back.

They came to the long table the next morning.

Not all of them. Eleven. The oldest. In their long felted coats, with their faces lined and brown and their hands, which were long and broad and had one more finger than ours, folded in front of them. They came up the long road from the train at dawn and walked down into the bowl of the long table, past thousands of seats, to the round stone at the bottom where Kwame sat on Hana's knee.

And the oldest of them knelt. And put her hand flat on the stone.

And sang.

Dot translated.

She'd learned the Hathri over the year. Dot learned everything. She spoke through the wood of the long table, every seat at once, so that the whole bowl could hear.

She says the ground answered, said Dot.

The bowl went very quiet.

She says every night for a year they have sung to the ground of the new steppe. To let it know they are on it. And the new ground listened, because the hill queen taught it how. A pause. Last night, at sundown, it sang back.

Not the new ground. Through it. From very far.

From home.

"From the Hathri world," said Okafor.

She was standing at the edge of the round stone. In her Marshal's coat. She'd come down when the Hathri came, because Dot had sent for her, and she'd been standing very still ever since.

Yes, said Dot.

"The world's black. All of it. The steppe, the mountain, everything. Their queen's under the black on the mountain. Alive. Very faint." Okafor's voice was very steady. "Is that who sang back? The queen?"

The old Hathri woman lifted her head.

And sang something. Very short.

Dot didn't translate it at once.

She says no, said Dot at last. She says the queen sings every night too. They can hear her. They have always been able to hear her, very far, through the ground. That is not new. A pause. She says what sang back last night was not the queen.

She says it was them.

Nobody said anything.

She says, said Dot, very carefully, when the black came onto the steppe, and the ships closed their ramps, there were nine hundred thousand Hathri still on the grass. A pause. She says the Hathri have winter hollows. Under the steppe. Deep. Where they go when the long storms come, and stay for weeks, and sing the ground shut over them so the storm cannot reach them. Another pause. She says some of the ones on the grass reached the hollows. Before the black.

She says last night they sang back.

Holt was at the back of the bowl.

I hadn't known he was there. He was standing at the top of the last ring of seats with his stick, very still, with his face grey. When Dot said winter hollows, he sat down. Not in a seat. On the step. All at once. As if his legs had stopped.

I went up to him.

He didn't look at me. He was looking down at the round stone, at the old Hathri woman with her hand flat on it.

"Under the grass," he said. Very quietly. "Hollows. Under the grass."

"Holt."

"I closed the ramps," he said. "With thirty-one of mine still on the grass. Shouting. Pulling people up." His hand was white on the stick. "And the black came. And I thought—"

He stopped.

"Wren," he said. "Get Wren."

Wren listened all afternoon.

On the new steppe, in the far west. On her knees in the long grass beside the old Hathri woman, with her hand flat on the ground the way the Hathri put theirs. With her eyes shut.

She listened down. Through the new ground. Through the hill queen's song in it. Along the thread that ran from every queen to every world her young had ever lived on, which was how the new ground had heard the old one at all.

To the Hathri world.

At dusk she opened her eyes.

"Hollows," she said. "Under the black. Deep. I can hear them. Not well. The black's thick. But they're there." She was very white. "Eleven. Eleven hollows. All across the steppe. Where the Hathri ran."

"How many in them?" said Okafor.

Wren shut her eyes again.

"A lot," she said. "Packed in. Very close. Very slow. They've been under there a year. Singing the ground shut. Eating what was in the hollows for winter." She swallowed. "Forty thousand. Maybe more. I can't count them all. They're too close together. Their hearts are all going at the same speed. Like one heart."

Forty thousand.

Out of nine hundred thousand.

"And mine?" said Holt.

Wren didn't open her eyes.

She listened for a very long time. Longer than she'd ever listened to anything. Longer than she'd listened to the nine quiet places in the voice, or the gap on the ninth line, or the far queen calling from past the middle.

Then she said:

"Nineteen."

Holt didn't move.

"Nineteen human hearts," said Wren. Very quietly. "In the third hollow. The one nearest where the ships were." She opened her eyes. "They're slower than the Hathri. Much slower. They're not built for it. For a year in the dark under the black eating winter stores." A pause. "But they're there."

Holt looked at her.

"Nineteen," he said.

"Nineteen."

"Of thirty-one."

Wren didn't say anything.

Holt put both hands over his face.

Okafor planned it that night.

She did it in the map room, the way she did everything. Standing. With Garnet's sheet on the great table and the black circle near the western edge with its white dot, and beside it a new sheet Garnet had drawn that afternoon from what Wren told her. The steppe. Black. All of it. A continent of black. And on it, eleven small circles, scattered. And at the edge, a mountain, with a dot.

Everyone was there.

Task Force Nine. Mother and Ingrid and Maura, in three chairs by the window, with the teapot. Luna, Sera, Risa. Anja and the Drenn queen's eldest. Neve and Toby. Wren. The heavy queen's eldest young, who'd taken all afternoon to come up the long road and lay now across the doorway with its great grey head on the threshold. Holt, at the end of the table, with his stick.

And me.

"Two things to get," said Okafor. "Eleven hollows. Forty thousand Hathri, nineteen of ours. And the queen, under the mountain." She put her finger on the steppe. "The black's thick. A year thick. The heavy young can dig it, but not fast, not across a continent. Not eleven hollows and a mountain." She looked at the three chairs. "Calder."

Maura looked up from her cup.

"You put enough warm into a black arm that it couldn't stay empty," said Okafor. "Can you do it to ground?"

Maura considered this.

"I don't know, love," she said. "I've never tried."

"Try," said Okafor. "On the first hollow. Over the top of it. If the black over a hollow can't stay empty, it's soil. If it's soil, the heavy young can dig it in a day instead of a month." She looked at the heavy young in the doorway. "And when they're through, Dask lifts them out."

"Forty thousand," I said.

"In eleven trips," said Okafor. "One per hollow. You've lifted an archive." She didn't look at me. "You'll manage."

"The houses will know," said Luna.

Okafor nodded.

"The minute we come out of the rope," she said. "They've watched every world we've gone to. They'll watch this one." She looked at the black circle. "And this one's different. It's the one where we closed the ramps. Where we left people." A pause. "They know we'll come back for it. They've been waiting a year for us to."

"So it's a trap."

"Everything's a trap," said Okafor. "That's what a front is." She put her pencil down. Very straight. "Calder. Windsor. Calder. You're over the hollows. In the air. Whatever comes down, it comes down on you first." Luna. Sera. Risa. "Anja. The Drenn. On the ground round the first hollow. Holt—"

"I'm going down," said Holt.

Okafor looked at him.

"Into the hollow," said Holt. "The third one. With the nineteen." His voice was very flat. "When the heavy young are through. I'm going down first."

"Holt—"

"I closed the ramps, Maris," said Holt. "I'm going down the hole."

Okafor didn't argue.

She looked at him for a long time. Then she wrote it on the slate.

Holt — down first.

The ash keeper came to the map room at midnight.

I didn't know it was coming. Nobody did. It came up the long road from the red glass on its own, slowly, the way it walked everywhere, with the red scarf the girl from Halden had given it closed in one long grey hand. It stood in the doorway beside the heavy young.

I would like to come, it said.

Everyone looked at it.

My mother was under the black, it said. For a long time. Taught to be nothing. The houses made her into the thing that took my world. A pause. The forest queen went into the black and found her. Lucas sang her shape. She came out. It looked at the scarf in its hand. I would like to be there. When the black comes off someone else's mother.

"You can't fight," said Okafor.

No, said the ash keeper. But I know what the black is like from underneath. My mother told me. Every night since she woke. It looked at Maura. I can tell the warm one where it is thinnest.

Okafor looked at Maura.

Maura looked at the ash keeper for a long time. At the scarf. At its long grey face.

"Come on, then, love," she said. "Have you eaten?"

We went at dawn.

Three ships. The Harness, for the heavy young, because only iron could carry them. The Long Legs, for the Hathri, every hold empty. The Scarecrow.

The Drenn queen sang the rope.

The Hathri world was black.

All of it. From the window of the Scarecrow, coming out of the rope, it was a black world. Not a world with black on it. A black world. The whole of the continent of steppe, from one edge of the sea to the other, flat and black and empty under a bruised sky. The rivers black. The hills black. The long winding lines where the Hathri had driven their herds for a thousand years, following the rain, black.

And at the western edge, a mountain. Black. With a tower on it. Black.

Nothing moved.

"Third hollow," I said. "There."

I could feel it. Under the black. Very deep. Very warm, for something under the black. Packed. Forty-odd hollows of Hathri, all across the continent, and the third one nearest where Holt's six ships had come down in a line a year ago with their ramps open.

And in it, nineteen hearts that weren't Hathri.

Slow. Very slow.

There.

We came down.

Not on the hollow. Beside it. On the black. With the ramps down and the heavy young coming down the Harness's ramp one at a time, grey and wide and low, onto the black that couldn't take anything from them because they were made of weight.

Luna went up. On ice. Risa after her as lightning. Sera, light as hot air, burning. Into the bruised sky over the hollow. Watching.

Anja came down with the Drenn and stood in a ring.

And Maura walked out onto the black.

She had her sleeves rolled up.

She walked out onto the black with the ash keeper beside her, very tall and grey, with its scarf, and Mother on one side and Ingrid on the other. Into the middle of the ring of Drenn. To the place over the hollow where the ash keeper stopped, and looked down, and said, here.

Here is thinnest, it said. Here the Hathri sang hardest. The ground remembers them.

Maura knelt down.

On the black. With her knees in it. The way the Hathri knelt at sundown.

And put both hands flat on the ground.

I felt it go in.

Warm. Her warm. Like bread. Like a kitchen. Like the inside of a house at the end of a long day. Except it wasn't one room now. It was every room. Every fire in the house I'd opened in her kitchen a month before. All of them. Lit. Going down through her hands into the black.

The black took it.

The way it took everything.

And Maura put more in.

She didn't stop. She never stopped. She knelt on the black with her sleeves rolled up and her hands flat and kept it warm, and kept it warm, and kept it warm. Not giving from the bottom of a well now. Giving from a house with every fire lit and the walls giving it back.

Ten minutes.

Twenty.

The black over the hollow went grey.

Then brown.

Then soft.

Soil.

Under Maura's hands. A patch the width of the Scarecrow's ramp. Brown, and damp, and warm. Not grass. Not living. But not black. Soil that had been so full of warm it couldn't stay empty any more, and had forgotten it had been taught to.

Maura sat back on her heels.

"Oh," she said. Very quietly. "Oh, that's nice."

The heavy young went past her.

Onto the soil. And lay down on it. And pressed.

And the ground went down under them like water.

They were through in four hours.

Holt went down first.

On a rope. With his stick tied to his back, because he wouldn't leave it. With Toby on the next rope, for the hearts. Down a hundred feet of soft brown soil the heavy young had pressed aside, into the dark, toward the warm.

I went down beside them. Scattered. Not on a rope. Spread thin down the shaft, feeling everything.

The hollow opened at the bottom.

It was big.

Bigger than I'd thought. A long low cave, sung out of the rock under the steppe a long time ago, curving away into the dark further than I could feel. The Hathri winter hollow. Warm, for something a hundred feet under a black world. Warm because it was full.

Of Hathri.

Thousands. Packed in. Lying in the dark in their long felted coats, close together, very close, the way the young lay in their mother's coils under the black on every world we'd dug. Their hearts all going at the same speed. Slow. Like one heart.

They didn't move when we came down.

They'd been in the dark for a year. They didn't know what moving was for any more.

And at the near end of the hollow, by the wall, where the shaft came down, a small group that wasn't Hathri.

Sitting. Not lying. Sitting, with their backs against the rock, in what had been uniforms a year ago. Very thin. Very still. With Hathri lying round them, close, the way you'd lie round a fire.

Nineteen.

Holt let go of the rope.

At the bottom. In the dark. He stood there for a moment, with Toby coming down behind him and me spread all round, and looked at them.

Then he walked across the hollow floor. Slowly. With his stick still tied to his back, because he'd forgotten to take it off. Between the Hathri lying in the dark.

To the nineteen.

One of them looked up.

A woman. Young. Very thin. With her hair grown long and tied back with a strip of Hathri felt and her face grey in the dark. Corporal's bars on what was left of her collar.

She looked at Holt for a long time.

"Sir," she said.

Her voice was a thread. She hadn't used it much. Not for a year.

Holt knelt down.

He knelt on the floor of the hollow in front of her with his stick tied to his back and didn't say anything.

"Corporal Hollin," said the woman. "Dace Hollin. Second section." A pause. "We got them down, sir. When the ramps closed. We were still pulling people up and the ramps closed and the black was a mile off." She swallowed. "And one of them grabbed my arm. One of the Hathri. An old man. And pulled. And said something. And ran." Another pause. "So we ran after him."

"I closed the ramps," said Holt.

"I know, sir," said Hollin. "I saw."

Holt didn't say anything.

"Six thousand on board," said Hollin. "And the black a mile off. And closing." Her voice was very steady, for a thread. "If you'd waited, sir, everyone on board would've gone. We knew that. We all knew that. On the ramps." She looked at him. "We weren't waiting for you to wait."

"Thirty-one," said Holt.

Hollin looked down.

"Twelve didn't make the hollow," she said. "Mortimer. Sayle. Okonkwo. Both the Adair twins." A pause. "Nine more. I'll tell you their names. I've been saying them every night. With the Hathri. When they sing to the ground." She looked up. "They said it's how you let the ground know someone's still on it. Even if they're not."

Holt put out his hand.

Flat. The way Tally did. The way every child off every bench did. Not knowing he was doing it.

Hollin looked at it for a long time.

Then she put her hand against it.

"You came back, sir," she said.

"Yes," said Holt.

"We knew you would," said Hollin. "We said so. Every night." A pause. "Copper said you wouldn't. He was wrong. He owes me a month of bread."

And Holt, on his knees on the floor of the hollow, with his stick tied to his back, put his face down against her hand and didn't move.

The correctors came at the second hour after we broke through.

Of course they did.

They'd been waiting a year. They came down out of the bruised sky over the steppe in a long dark rain. Not over the third hollow. Over all of them. All eleven. Every hollow on the steppe at once. A thousand of them. More.

To make sure.

Luna and Risa and Sera took the sky over the third hollow.

Ice floors. Lightning. Star. The way they'd done over the long ward. Over and over. Risa lit them. Luna dropped them. Sera waited underneath.

Anja and the Drenn took the ground round the shaft.

And over the other ten hollows, scattered across the black, there was nobody.

That was when Ingrid stood up.

She'd been on the black beside Maura all through the digging. Sitting. Resting. She wasn't young. She'd spent years in a room. She stood up now, very slowly, with Mother's hand under her elbow, and looked up at the sky over the steppe. At a thousand correctors coming down. Over eleven hollows. Spread across a continent.

"Dot," she said.

"I know," said Mother.

"I can't reach all of them. Not from here. Not that far."

"I know."

Ingrid looked at Risa. In the sky over the third hollow. Mid-bolt.

"Risa," she said. Not loudly. Through the silver. The way storm calls to storm.

Risa heard. I felt her hear. She stopped in the air.

"Come here," said Ingrid. "Bring the storm. All of it. I'll give you the quiet."

Risa came down.

As lightning. Out of the sky. To her mother on the black. And stood beside her. Both of them with their hair on end. The same blue in both of them. The same lattice.

Ingrid took her hand.

"You throw," she said. "I'll hush."

I've tried to describe what happened next to Genny for the brood book. I can't. Okafor wasn't there. She made me tell it four times.

The whole steppe went quiet.

All of it. A continent. Every corrector coming down over every hollow. Ingrid put out her one thin hand, and through Risa's hand in hers, through Risa's storm, which was bigger than hers had ever been, she reached. Further than she'd ever reached. Across a continent.

And called the spark out of every one.

They stopped. In the air. Over eleven hollows. A thousand of them. Hanging. With nothing in them.

And Risa threw.

The sky over the Hathri world lit from one edge of the sea to the other.

There was nothing left when it was over.

Not over the third hollow. Not over any of them. The bruised sky was clear. And on the black, across the whole of the steppe, a thousand small dark marks where something had come apart before it landed.

Risa sat down on the black.

Ingrid sat down beside her.

They didn't say anything. They sat there on the black with their hands still joined and their hair still on end, breathing very hard.

Then Risa started to laugh.

We were there four days.

Maura warmed the black over every hollow. One a day, the first two. Then two a day. Then three, because she said she'd got the knack of it now and it was like kneading, you just had to know when the dough was ready. The ash keeper walked beside her. Every time. To every hollow. And stopped. And said here.

The heavy young dug.

I lifted.

Forty-one thousand, two hundred and six Hathri. Out of eleven hollows. Into the Long Legs. Into the Harness, when the Long Legs was full. Into the Scarecrow.

Nineteen of ours.

And on the fourth day, the mountain.

The tower was still there. On top. Black. Grown out of the mountain where the Hathri queen had been, a year ago, when she heard the song and stopped holding her breath and the black came up the mountain before anyone could reach her.

She was under it.

I could feel her. Very deep. Curled very tight. With her heart so slow I kept losing it, the way Wren did.

Maura knelt at the foot of the tower.

She put her hands flat on the black.

The ash keeper stood beside her. Very still. Looking at the tower. At the black. At the place under it where a queen was curled.

Here, it said. Very quietly. Here is where they taught it hardest. A pause. Here is where she held.

Maura looked up at it.

"Then here's where I'll be warmest," she said.

It took her all day.

The whole of the fourth day. On her knees at the foot of the tower with her sleeves rolled up and her hands flat. The black on the mountain was thicker than anywhere. A year thick. Taught hardest. It took everything she gave it.

She gave it more.

At dusk the black round the foot of the tower went grey. Then brown. Then soft.

The heavy young went down.

The Hathri queen came up at midnight.

Out of the mountain. Long and brown and gold, like dry grass at the end of summer. Curled. Very small. Very cold. With nothing in her coils, because her young had been a thousand miles away on the steppe when the black came, and she'd had nothing to carry down with her but herself.

She came up out of the soil into the dark on top of the mountain.

And the Hathri on the ships heard her.

Forty-one thousand of them. In three holds. Who'd been lying in the dark under the black for a year, singing the ground shut, listening to her sing every night through a continent of black.

They stood up.

All of them. At once. In three ships. And put one hand flat on the floor.

And sang.

The Hathri queen uncurled.

On top of her mountain. In the dark. With Maura on her knees beside her, and the ash keeper, and Mother, and Ingrid, and me.

She lifted her head.

And sang back.

Holt didn't come up the mountain.

He stayed on the Long Legs. In the hold. With the nineteen. With Hollin, and Copper, who'd said he wouldn't come and owed Hollin a month of bread, and seventeen more. He sat on the floor of the hold with them and the Hathri all round, singing to the floor, and when they finished singing he said the twelve names.

Mortimer. Sayle. Okonkwo. Both the Adair twins. And seven more.

The Hathri sang after each one.

To let the ground know.

We took them to the new steppe first.

Not the red glass. Not the bowl. The Long Legs and the Harness went straight west, past the salt, and came down on the grass I'd made a year before, grass to the edge of the sky. Where six thousand Hathri had sung to the ground every night for a year, and one night the ground sang back.

They were waiting.

All six thousand. On the grass. In their long felted coats. Standing in a long line at the edge of where the ships came down, very still, the way the Hathri stood when they didn't know yet what they were about to be told.

The ramps went down.

And forty-one thousand Hathri walked off them onto grass.

Some of them couldn't walk. A year under the black. Toby went down the ramps ahead of them with Neve, feeling hearts, and the ones who couldn't walk, the six thousand came forward and carried. On their backs. The way they'd carried their children up the ramps a year before.

Nobody said anything for a long time.

Then the old woman, the oldest, the one who'd knelt on the round stone at the bottom of the long table and put her hand flat on it and said the ground sang back, walked out from the line of six thousand.

Very slowly. Into the forty-one thousand. Looking.

She stopped in front of an old man.

Very thin. Very bent. In a felted coat gone grey with a year of dark. Being carried by two of the six thousand, one under each arm.

She looked at him for a long time.

Then she put her hand flat on his chest.

And he put his on hers.

And neither of them sang, or said anything, or moved. They stood there on the new grass with their hands on each other's chests while forty-seven thousand Hathri walked past them.

"Her husband," said Dot. Later. When I asked. Through the wood of the Scarecrow's ramp. The one who grabbed the corporal's arm. On the grass, when the ramps closed. And pulled. And ran. A pause. She did not know he had reached a hollow. She has sung his name to the ground every night for a year.

Hollin was at the foot of the Long Legs' ramp. Watching. With her hair still tied back with the strip of felt.

When the old man saw her, over his wife's shoulder, he took one hand off his wife's chest. And held it out. Flat. Toward Hollin.

She went to him.

And put her hand against it.

The long table met when we came home.

In the bowl. With the Hathri. All of them. The six thousand who'd come on Holt's ships a year ago, and the forty-one thousand from the hollows, and their queen, carried down from the Harness by the heavy queen herself, who came down off the red glass for it and walked the whole way to the bowl with the Hathri queen held very gently in the hollow under her jaw.

Holt stood at the bottom of the bowl. Where he'd stood a year ago. In front of a thousand seats. And said what he'd said then.

That he'd closed the ramps. That he'd do it again. That he'd never forgive himself.

Then he said one more thing.

"And they ran," he said. "When the ramps closed. Toward the hollows. With the Hathri." He looked at the nineteen, in the front row. "They didn't wait for me to save them. They saved themselves." A pause. "I'd like that written down. In the book. Before the rest."

Genny wrote it down.

Holt sat down.

And for the first time since the Hathri world, Okafor said afterward, he slept. In his own bed. All night. With his stick on the floor beside him.

I said it that night. On the porch. In order.

The three chairs first. Mother, who held the hole walls for four days. Ingrid, who hushed a continent. Maura, who warmed eleven hollows and a mountain and came home and made Holt a loaf.

When I got to Maura she said, "Wait."

I waited.

"The ash keeper," she said. "It walked beside me. Four days. To every hollow. Every time." She looked out at the red glass. Where the ash keeper had gone back to lie against its mother, against the heavy queen's side, with its scarf. "It never once said anything about itself."

"No."

"Say it to the ash keeper too," said Maura. "Tonight. It'll hear. It's very good at hearing."

So I did.

Days 3341–3348. Left Behind.

The Hathri sing to the ground every night to let it know they're still on it; after a year, the ground sang back. Winter hollows, under the black steppe: Wren heard forty thousand hearts in eleven of them, and nineteen of Holt's thirty-one. Okafor planned it in a night. The ash keeper asked to come, because it knows the black from underneath, and showed Maura where it was thinnest. Maura knelt and warmed the black until it was soil, and the heavy young went through like water. Holt went down first and knelt to Corporal Dace Hollin: they ran after an old Hathri man when the ramps closed; we weren't waiting for you to wait. A thousand correctors came down on all eleven hollows; Ingrid took Risa's hand, you throw, I'll hush, and the whole sky lit. Forty-one thousand two hundred and six Hathri, nineteen of ours, and their queen, off the mountain at midnight. Twelve names, sung to the floor. Holt slept.