Chapter 354 Unfinished

It was Neve's page that made me ask.

Ingrid's page. From the first week of the Long Count. Neve brought it up the hill herself, at dusk, because she said she'd been looking at it for three days and couldn't stop, and she wanted to know if I saw what she saw.

She put it on the kitchen table. Next to the teapot.

Silver returning where the band was. All the way down. Faster than expected. Catching up.

And under that, in Neve's small careful hand, a line she'd added afterward:

But not finishing. It comes back to where it was. And stops. Like water filling a jar up to a line someone drew.

"Someone drew a line," I said.

"That's what it feels like." Neve looked at the page. "I've felt a lot of silver now. Every week. Thousands of people. Finished and not." She tapped the line. "Most unfinished silver doesn't have an edge. It just goes as far as it goes, and then it's thin, and then it's nothing. Like a field that runs out into scrub." A pause. "Hers has an edge. Sharp. Like a wall. It comes right up to it, every path, and stops dead."

"The band."

"Not the band," said Neve. "Older than the band. The band was on top of it." She looked at me. "Lucas, I think somebody narrowed her. On purpose. Before the band. A long time ago."

I knew who.

Not the name. The thing. The same thing they'd done to every one of us in the Program, before we were cadets. Before Avalon. Before I knew what silver was. The narrow places. The way the Program opened the silver so far and no further. So you'd be useful. So you'd be not too much.

Be useful, the old queen had said. Be not too much. The program sang one note into you.

They'd done it to Ingrid too. During the war. Or after. To the Hush. To the woman who could stop three hundred handlers in a river with one hand.

They'd decided she was too much.

I asked her the next morning.

On the plain. At dawn. Where she'd been teaching Risa the quiet every morning since the long ward. With a candle. Always a candle. Risa sat cross-legged on the grass in front of it with her hands on her knees and her hair on end, trying to make the flame go still without putting it out, and Ingrid sat beside her in the green scarf, watching.

I waited until Risa got it. It took most of an hour. The flame went still. Not out. Still. Standing straight up in the dawn air like something painted.

Risa let her breath out.

Ingrid nodded. Once.

"Better," she said. "Tomorrow, two candles."

Then she looked up at me. Standing at the edge of the grass. With Neve's page in my hand.

"You've been standing there an hour, Dask," she said. "Either sit down or say what you came to say."

I sat down.

I showed her the page.

She read it. Twice. The way Voss read. Then she folded it, very carefully, and gave it back.

"I know," she said.

"You know?"

"I've always known," said Ingrid. "I was there when they did it." She looked at the candle. Still standing straight up, though Risa had let go of it. "After the Kesh ford. After the report. After Konrad got the medal and the northern front started calling him the Storm." Her voice was very steady. "The Council sent a doctor. To the line. To assess me. That's what they called it." A pause. "She put her hands on my head for an hour. And when she took them off, I could still do everything I'd done at the ford. Not more. Not ever more."

Risa had gone very still.

"She said it was for my safety," said Ingrid. "She said a woman who could do what I did at the ford, and was still getting stronger, was a danger to the line." She looked at her hands. "She said I'd thank her."

"Did you?"

"I thanked her," said Ingrid. "I was very young. And very tired. And I'd just watched three hundred handlers come apart in a river." She closed her hands. "I didn't know yet what it meant. To have somebody draw a line in you and tell you that's where you stop."

Nobody said anything for a long time.

"I can open it," I said.

Ingrid looked at me.

"The line," I said. "The narrow place. I've opened them in everyone. All the cadets. Mother, on the hello. Maura. The thirty-one." I looked at her. "I can finish you. If you'd like."

Ingrid didn't answer.

She looked at the candle for a long time. Still standing straight up. Still not moving. Then she reached out, without looking, and pinched it out with two fingers.

"I'm sixty-one," she said. "I spent years on a bed. I came out and I have a daughter who throws lightning and a son who holds it in a fence and two grandchildren who make thunder in their sleep." She looked at her fingers. At the black of the wick on them. "I have my silver back. All of it. Everything I had at the ford. Everything they left me." A pause. "I don't know that I need more."

"Mother," said Risa.

Ingrid looked at her.

Risa was sitting up very straight. With her hands on her knees. With her hair not on end. For once.

"You'd be unstoppable," she said.

Ingrid didn't say anything.

"I know what you can do," said Risa. "I've seen it. In the corridor under the east block. On the road outside the long ward. On the Hathri world, through my hand. You hushed a continent." Her voice was very level. "And that's what they left you. That's what they let you keep. After they drew the line."

"Risa—"

"I'm finished," said Risa. "Lucas finished me. A long time ago. Before Dory." She held out her hand. Palm up. And the lightning came up off it. Not a spark. A storm. A small one. Standing in her palm, turning, white and blue. "And the queens gave me more. On the mountain. I can fly. I can travel as lightning. From here to the Hesk ranges in the time it takes to blink." She closed her hand. The storm went out. "Mother. Everything I can do came from you. You heard what you said on the step. It's mine. Every bit of it." She swallowed. "Then you should have it too. All of it. Not just the part they let you keep."

Ingrid looked at her daughter for a very long time.

"Fly," she said.

"Fly."

"I never flew," said Ingrid. "Not once. Not at the ford. Not anywhere." She looked up. At the sky over the plain. Blue. Mostly. With Risa's small cloud hanging over the three of us. "The men used to say the Storm could fly. In the stories. After the war. In the dome. They said he flew over the Kesh ford like a hawk and threw the lightning down." She almost smiled. "He couldn't climb a ladder without holding on with both hands."

"You could fly," said Risa. "You'd fly better than me. You'd have the quiet. I can't hold still in the air. I just go. You'd be able to stop. Up there. Hang. Like the flame."

Ingrid didn't say anything.

"And as lightning," said Risa. Very quietly. "Mother. You could go as it. Not throw it. Be it. From here to anywhere." She looked at her. "You could have been out of that room in a second. If they hadn't drawn the line. You could have gone through the wall."

Ingrid stood up.

Very slowly. With the green scarf round her shoulders. She stood on the grass of the plain in the dawn light and looked out toward the Hesk ranges, far off to the east, blue at the edge of the world.

"I'd like to talk to Dot," she said.

She talked to Mother all morning.

On the porch. In the two chairs. With the teapot. I didn't listen. I went to the map room and worked on the Lanthe's valley with Okafor and tried not to think about it, and failed, and Okafor told me to go home and stop drawing on her map.

When I came back up the hill at noon, Mother was alone on the porch.

"Where's Ingrid?"

"Gone to find Maura," said Mother. "And then Sigmund." She poured me a cup. "And then Konrad, I think. Though she didn't say."

"Did she decide?"

Mother looked at me for a long time.

"She asked me what it was like," she said. "When you finished me. On the hello. From eleven light-years away." She looked at her arms. At the markings that had come up on them, the day I finished her. Small exact shapes, like the bowls and the flour and the spoons in our kitchen in the dome. "She asked if it hurt. I said no. She asked if I was still me after. I said yes." A pause. "She asked if I'd do it again. Knowing everything."

"What did you say?"

"I said I'd held a Hand's finger open with it from across the dark, and held the Overseer for twelve hours, and held the road outside the long ward with her standing next to me." Mother drank her tea. "I said I'd do it a thousand times."

Maura told me about it later. In her kitchen. With her hands in the dough.

"She came in and sat down at the table," said Maura. "Didn't say anything. Sat there. So I gave her the dough." She pushed it flat. "She's never kneaded bread in her life, you know. Not once. They had cooks on the northern line for the officers' wives." She folded it. "She was terrible at it. Pushed it about like it had done something to her."

"What did she say?"

"She asked if I was still me." Maura laughed. "I said, love, look at me. Do I look like anyone else?" She held up her hands. Floury. Warm. "Then she asked if it was frightening. Before. And I said yes. I said I stood at the bottom of Dot's steps and told her I was frightened I wouldn't be the kitchen any more." She put the dough down. "And I told her what Dot said. Then you'll be the house. With the kitchen still in it."

"And?"

"And she said, I've never had a kitchen, Maura. I've only ever had a wall." Maura was quiet for a moment. "So I said, well, love. Then you'll find out what's behind it. And if it's a storm, it's a storm. And you'll come here after and I'll make you tea, and you can push my dough about some more, and we'll see if you're any better at it."

She went back to kneading.

"She wasn't," she said. "Not a bit. But she laughed."

Ingrid came back at dusk.

With Sigmund. He walked beside her up the long road from the hospital with his hands in his pockets and his fence so tight round him that it didn't spark at all, and when they reached the porch he went and sat down on the top step without a word.

Ingrid stood at the bottom.

"Maura says yes," she said. "Maura says she was frightened too, and it was still her afterward, and the bread was still right." She looked at Sigmund. "Sigmund says he doesn't know. He says he's frightened of what I'd be. He says he grew up being frightened of what he was. The fence. Holding it all in so nobody got hurt." She looked at her son. "He says if I open it all up, he doesn't know how to be next to that."

Sigmund didn't look up.

"And Konrad?" I said.

Ingrid's face didn't change.

"Konrad said it wasn't his to say," she said. "He said he'd said enough things about me that weren't his to say, and written enough of them down." A pause. "He said whatever I decided, he'd bring bread."

She sat down on the bottom step. Beside Sigmund's feet.

"I'm frightened too," she said. To him. Not to me. "I want you to know that. Not of what I'd be. Of the line." She looked at her hands. "I've had it so long. Since I was twenty-five. I don't know where I end without it. It's been the edge of me my whole life." She swallowed. "What if there's no edge? What if I just go?"

Sigmund didn't say anything for a long time.

Then he took his hands out of his pockets. And held one out. Palm up. And a very small spark came up off it. Blue. And stood there. Very still. Not going anywhere.

"Then I'll be the edge," he said. "That's what I'm for. Ruth says. The fence." He looked at her. "I'll hold your hand. While he does it. If you go, I'll hold you." A pause. "I've held lightning still my whole life. I can hold yours."

We did it at dawn.

On the plain. Where she'd taught Risa the quiet. With a candle. Because Ingrid said if she was going to come apart she'd like to know whether she could still make a flame stand still afterward, and that was the only way to know.

Ingrid sat cross-legged on the grass. In the green scarf.

Sigmund sat on her left. Holding her hand. With his fence round both of them.

Risa sat on her right. Holding the other.

Mother and Maura behind her. One hand each on her shoulders.

I knelt in front of her. And put my hands on either side of her head, the way the Council's doctor had, a long time ago, after the Kesh ford, to draw the line.

"Ready?" I said.

"No," said Ingrid. "Go on."

I shut my eyes.

And felt.

Her storm first. All of it. Everything they'd left her. A lattice, very fine, very bright, the same lattice I'd seen round small Sigmund's eyes the night he was born, the same one in Risa, the same one in Sigmund held so tight inside his fence it didn't move. Hers was older. Deeper. Everything I'd felt in the corridor under the east block, when she called the spark out of thirty correctors. All of it there. Bright. Moving.

And at the edge of it, the line.

It wasn't like the narrow places I'd opened in the cadets. Those had been gates. Built into everyone the same way, by the Program, so the silver would go so far and no further. You found the gate and you opened it.

This wasn't a gate.

It was a wall. One person had built it. By hand. With their hands on her head for an hour after the Kesh ford, very carefully, very thoroughly, all the way round. A wall round everything she was, at exactly the place where she'd stood in the river and stopped three hundred handlers.

That's where you stop, the wall said. There. No further.

And on the other side of the wall, everything she would have been.

I didn't break it.

I could have. I could feel every grain of it. I could have let it go, the way I let correctors go, all at once.

I didn't. Because it was hers. It had been the edge of her for thirty-six years. She'd said so. I don't know where I end without it.

So I asked it.

The way I asked towers. The way I asked the black. The way the queens asked the shape of Neve's hand to remember it was allowed to be full.

Who built you?

The wall didn't answer. It didn't know. It had been told what to be and been it, for thirty-six years.

Would you like to stop?

And Ingrid answered.

Not the wall. Her. From inside. I felt her reach for it. The way Maura reached for the first dark room next to the kitchen. The way you reach for something you've walked past every day of your life and never once touched.

She put her hand on the wall from the inside.

And I opened it.

It came down slowly.

A grain at a time. All the way round. And behind it, the storm.

Not more of the same. That was the thing. With Maura it had been the same warm, more of it, in rooms that had always been there. With Ingrid it wasn't the same. The storm behind the wall had never been allowed to happen. It had been waiting. For thirty-six years. Pressed up against the inside of the wall, getting stronger, the way the Council's doctor had said it would. A danger to the line.

When the wall came down, it didn't flow. It broke.

Sigmund held.

I felt it. His fence. Round both of them. Going white. Holding everything that came out of her when the wall came down, the way he'd held the lightning round the whole city the night small Sigmund was born. Holding it exactly where it needed to be. Nowhere else.

Risa held too. On the other side. Not a fence. Lightning. Her own. Meeting her mother's. Storm to storm. The way she'd met it on the Hathri world, when Ingrid reached through her hand across a continent.

Mother held the ground. Under all of them. So it wouldn't crack.

Maura kept them warm.

And I kept opening. A grain at a time. All the way round.

It took nineteen minutes.

When I opened my eyes, the candle on the grass in front of Ingrid was lit.

Nobody had lit it.

The flame stood straight up in the dawn air. Very still. Like something painted.

Ingrid was looking at it.

Her eyes had changed. The storm-grey was still there. But round it now, very fine, very bright, a lattice. Silver. The same as small Sigmund's. The same as Dory's. The ring that comes up round the eyes of anyone who's finished.

And on her arms, where the green scarf had slipped, small shapes. Coming up under the skin. Not lines. Not drawings. Small exact shapes, like Mother's.

Like the forks of lightning over a river.

"Oh," said Ingrid.

That was all. Very quietly. She looked at the candle. At her hands, in Sigmund's and Risa's. At the shapes on her arms.

Then she looked at Sigmund.

He was white. His fence was still up. Still round both of them. Shaking. Holding.

"You can let go now, love," she said.

"Are you sure?"

"No," said Ingrid. "Let go anyway."

Sigmund let go.

Nothing happened.

The candle stayed lit. Very still. Ingrid sat on the grass with her hands in her lap. And the storm in her, all of it, everything that had been pressed up against the inside of the wall for thirty-six years, stayed exactly where it was. Not breaking. Not going anywhere.

Held.

By her.

"The quiet," said Risa. Very softly. "You've got the quiet. Round all of it."

"I've always had the quiet," said Ingrid. "That was never the part they took." She looked at the candle. "It's just bigger now. It has to be."

Then she stood up.

And kept going.

Off the grass. Slowly. Her feet just leaving it, the way Risa's had on the old queen's terrace. Up. A foot. Two. Standing in the air over the plain with the green scarf round her shoulders, very still, the way the flame was still. Not rising. Not falling. Hanging.

She looked down at us.

"Oh," she said again.

Risa was on her feet. Then she wasn't on her feet. She was in the air beside her mother. Not hanging. Moving. Restless. The way Risa always was in the air, like lightning that hasn't decided where it's going.

Ingrid looked at her.

"Hold still," she said.

"I can't."

"You can," said Ingrid. "You've done it with a candle. Do it with yourself." She held out her hand. In the air. "Here."

Risa took it.

And for a moment, both of them were still. Mother and daughter. Hanging in the dawn over the plain, hand in hand, with their hair on end and the same blue running between their fingers.

Then Ingrid said, "Show me the lightning."

They went.

Both of them. At once. A line of white from the plain to the Hesk ranges, far off to the east, blue at the edge of the world. So bright I saw it through my eyelids. And the sound came after and rolled across the grass.

And came back.

Not one line. Two. Side by side. From the Hesk ranges to the plain. And they were standing on the grass in front of us again, both of them, with their hair straight up and their faces white and their eyes enormous.

Ingrid looked at the Hesk ranges. Then at Risa.

"Again," she said.

They went eleven times that morning.

To the Hesk ranges. To Carver, past the ninth lake. To the salt flats in the west, where the Hathri were singing to the ground and looked up at two lines of lightning going over them and sang louder. To the top of the old queen's mountain, where the old queen opened one pale eye on her terrace and watched them come and go.

The eleventh time, Ingrid didn't come back with Risa.

Risa came back alone. And stood on the grass. And looked round.

"Where—"

Ingrid came back a minute later. On her own. Not as lightning. Flying. Slowly. Down out of the blue sky over the plain, very still in the air, like the flame, with the green scarf round her shoulders.

She landed at the bottom of the long road.

Where Konrad was standing.

He'd been there since dawn. Mother said after. He'd come down from the guest house and stood at the bottom of the road with a loaf under his arm and watched the whole thing. From a distance. Not coming any closer. Not his to say.

Ingrid landed in front of him.

They looked at each other.

I didn't hear what she said. Nobody did. It wasn't ours.

But Konrad held out the loaf. And Ingrid took it. And put her other hand on his arm. For a moment. Just a moment.

Then she flew back up the road to the plain.

The children were on the porch steps when we came up the hill.

All of them. Dory and Ash and Trevor and small Sigmund, and Efua and Kwame on the bottom step, and Rory the second, and Harriet in Toby's arms at the end of the rail. They'd seen the lightning from the house. Everyone on Avalon had seen the lightning. Eleven times, from the plain to the edge of the world and back.

Small Sigmund was standing up. Very straight. With his spark running round his ear and his eyes enormous.

Ingrid came up the path. With Risa. With her hair still on end and the green scarf round her shoulders.

Small Sigmund looked at her eyes.

At the lattice round them. Fine and bright. The same as his.

"Grandma," he said. "You've got my eyes."

Ingrid stopped at the bottom of the steps.

"I think," she said, "you've got mine, love. I just didn't have them for a while."

Small Sigmund considered this.

Then he held out his hand. Palm up. And a very small storm came up off it, turning, white and blue. The way Risa's did. The way his uncle's did, when he forgot to hold it.

Ingrid held out hers.

The two storms met in the air between them. And stood there. Turning. Together.

And then, very slowly, because Ingrid did something with the quiet that I felt but couldn't have done myself, both of them went still. Like the flame. Standing straight up in the air between a grandmother and a grandson, not moving at all.

Small Sigmund's mouth fell open.

"How," he said.

"Tomorrow," said Ingrid. "On the plain. With a candle." She looked at Risa. "Your mother's on two candles. You can start with one."

Dory, on the top step, with Pebble, had been watching all of it with her chin on her knees. Checking.

"You're all right," she said. To Ingrid. "You're very bright inside. Brighter than this morning." A pause. "You've got no edge."

"No," said Ingrid. "I don't."

"That's all right," said Dory. "Uncle Sigmund's got one. He'll lend it to you."

Sigmund walked me down to the forge after.

He didn't say why. He came down the steps when I did and fell in beside me and walked with his hands in his pockets, the way he walked everywhere, and didn't say anything until we were past Thorne's green door.

"My fence," he said.

"Yes."

"It's still sparking. At the edges." He took one hand out of his pocket and looked at it. A very small blue spark ran round the tips of his fingers and didn't go out. "It's never done that. Not since I was eleven. I've held it so tight for so long I forgot it could do anything else."

"It held her," I said. "All of it. When the wall came down."

"I know." He looked at the spark. "That's what I'm frightened of. That I held all of that. And I didn't come apart." He put the hand back in his pocket. "Ruth always said the fence was about where. Not how strong. Holding it exactly where it needs to be." A pause. "I think I'm stronger than I thought, Dask. I think I always was. I just never let it out far enough to find out."

"Do you want me to look?"

Sigmund walked for a long time without answering.

"Not yet," he said. "Jessa's due in the spring." He didn't look at me. "I'd like to hold one thing still for a while first. Before I find out how much else I can hold."

I stopped walking.

Sigmund kept going two more steps. Then stopped too. And turned round. And looked at me with his face doing the thing it did when he was trying very hard to be polite about something enormous.

"I was going to tell Risa first," he said. "Tomorrow. On the plain. With the candle." A pause. "Don't you dare say anything."

I didn't.

Okafor came up the hill before supper.

She'd seen it too. From the map room window. She stood at the bottom of the porch steps in her Marshal's coat, buttoned right for once, with her slate under her arm, and looked at Ingrid in her chair for a long time.

"Carver," she said. "Past the ninth lake. How long?"

Ingrid considered.

"As lightning? I don't know. It was very fast. I wasn't counting."

"Risa says less than a breath," said Okafor. "Risa says you beat her back from the salt flats." She looked at the slate. "Can you carry?"

"Carry what?"

"Two women," said Okafor. "Not young. One of whom holds the ground and one of whom keeps everything warm. As lightning. From wherever you are to wherever something's coming down." She looked up. "Risa carried a horse."

Ingrid looked at Mother. At Maura.

Maura put down her teacup.

"I'm not being carried as lightning," she said. "I'd lose my hairpins."

"You'll hold onto your hairpins," said Mother.

"I'll be sick."

"You'll be sick when you get there," said Mother. "Then you'll keep everybody warm."

Maura looked at her for a long time. Then she picked the teacup up again.

"Tomorrow," she said. "After breakfast. Not before. And if I'm sick on your scarf, Ingrid Friese, you've only got yourself to blame."

Okafor wrote something on the slate. Very small.

Task Force Nine: anywhere on Avalon, under a breath. From tomorrow. After breakfast.

Wren was on the roof when I went up.

Father's roof. My roof. She'd climbed the ladder before me and was sitting with her back against the chimney and her eyes shut and her hands flat on the slates on either side of her.

I sat down beside her.

"A hundred and seventy-four," she said. Without opening her eyes.

I didn't say anything.

The far queen's count. One a day, at the same time, past the middle, in the hollow world. One queen who was holding stops. A hundred and seventy-four now. Every one in pieces in a room. Every one, Genny says, still humming. Since the far queen called. Since the day Wren had thought it was a clock.

"They're still holding," said Wren. "The rest. Every one. I can hear them now. Since the voice showed you the way. Not well. Very far. But I can hear the hollow world." She opened her eyes. "Lucas. They're holding harder. Since the song went out. Since we sang not still. Every time one stops, the rest hold harder." She swallowed. "And the houses are breaking them faster. It's not one a day any more. It's one in the morning and one at night."

"Since when?"

"Since Ingrid went as lightning over the old queen's mountain," said Wren. "This morning. Eleven times." She looked at me. "I think they felt it. I think they felt something that had been made not too much stop being not too much." A pause. "I think it frightened them."

I sat on Father's roof beside her for a long time.

"Then we'd better go soon," I said.

"Yes," said Wren. And shut her eyes again. And went back to counting.

I said it that night. On the porch.

Oldest first. The three chairs.

When I got to Ingrid, she held up her hand.

"Konrad never once said it," she said. "Not in thirty-six years. Not to me. Not to the children." She looked at her arms. At the forks of lightning under the skin. "I'm not going to forgive him for a great many things. Perhaps not for any of them." A pause. "But this morning he stood at the bottom of the road for three hours with a loaf of bread, and when I came down out of the sky he didn't say anything at all. He just held out the bread." She looked at me. "I think that was him saying it. As near as he can."

She looked at Sigmund. On the top step. With his fence down. Sparking very faintly at the edges, for the first time I could remember, as if he'd forgotten to hold it.

"You can say it to him, Dask," she said. "When you do the rest of us. At the end. He's waiting at the bottom of the steps."

I looked down.

Konrad was there. At the bottom of the porch steps. In his dark coat. With nothing in his hands.

So I said it to him too. At the end.

He didn't say anything. He stood there for a long time. Then he nodded, once, and went home.

Days 3461–3466. Unfinished.

Neve's page: Ingrid's silver comes back up to a line and stops dead, like water to a mark someone drew. Someone did: after the Kesh ford the Council sent a doctor to put her hands on her head for an hour and wall her in, for the line's safety. I asked if she'd like me to finish her. Risa: you'd be unstoppable; you could fly; you could go as lightning; you could have gone through the wall of that room. Ingrid was frightened of having no edge. Sigmund: then I'll be the edge. On the plain at dawn, with a candle, Sigmund and Risa holding her hands, Mother holding the ground and Maura keeping us warm, I asked the wall and she reached for it from inside. Nineteen minutes. The candle lit itself. Lightning forks on her arms; the ring round her eyes; the quiet, bigger. She hung in the air like the flame, then went as lightning eleven times with Risa. She came down at the bottom of the road where Konrad held out a loaf. I said it to him too. Task Force Nine can be anywhere on Avalon under a breath, after breakfast. Wren: the houses felt it; they break two a day now.