Chapter 385 Again

Wren counted it first.

Of course she did. Wren counts everything. She's counted every person who came down the ramp onto the red glass since the first wave, and every name on the north wall, and every heart on every porch on every night I've said it in order. She counted four hundred and twelve queens answering, once, under the ring of the fire world. She counts in her sleep, Toby says. He says he's woken up in the dark more than once and heard her murmuring numbers into the pillow.

So she counted it first.

She was on the porch. On the eighth evening after the ribbons. In her usual place at the end of the rail, between Toby and the post, with Harriet asleep against her side and her eyes half closed, counting, the way she does every night while I go down the rail.

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

I stopped.

"Wait," she said.

Everyone on the porch went quiet.

Wren doesn't stop me. Not ever. Not in all the years. Wren is the one who makes sure I've got everyone; she counts along with me under her breath and nods when I've reached the end, so I know nobody's been missed.

She'd never once held up her hand.

She sat very still at the end of the rail with her eyes shut. Listening. The way she listens to hearts.

Then she opened her eyes.

"I've been counting wrong," she said.

"You've never counted wrong," said Toby. Beside her. With his fiddle across his knees. "Not once. Not since the first day."

"I've been counting wrong for about a month," said Wren. Very calmly. "I kept getting one more than there should be. Every night. On the porch." She looked at me. "I thought it was one of the grandmothers from the four. Sitting on the grass where I couldn't see. I thought, she'll come up to the rail eventually, and I'll find her."

"And?"

Wren put her hand flat on her middle.

"She's not on the grass," she said.

Toby didn't say anything.

He didn't move. He sat on the porch rail with his fiddle on his knees and looked at Wren's hand on her middle for a very long time. The way he looks at a note he's never heard before and doesn't know how to play yet.

Harriet, asleep against Wren's side, woke up.

Toby and Wren's daughter isn't one of mine; she grows the ordinary way, the way children grew on Earth, a year at a time. She sings every dawn. She has since she was very small.

She looked at her mother's hand.

And then she put her own beside it. Small. Flat. Not touching. Near. The way Genny taught her.

And hummed.

One note. High and clear. Toby's note. The one he played on the red glass the night she was born.

And something under Wren's hand hummed back.

Toby put the fiddle down.

Very carefully. On the porch boards. The way Konrad puts his coat down when he's about to do something that matters.

And knelt down in front of Wren. On the porch. In front of everyone.

And put his hand next to Harriet's.

He didn't play anything. He didn't sing. He didn't need to. Toby's power is that he carries sound; he can take a note from one place and put it somewhere else, across a canyon or under a ring or into a stone so that Wren can count by it. He carried Harriet's note into a stone once, so Wren could count under the ring of the fire world.

He didn't carry anything now.

He just knelt there. With his hand next to his daughter's. Listening.

"There," said Wren. Very quietly. "Can you hear it?"

Toby nodded.

He couldn't say anything.

Halloway came up the hill the next morning.

With Ruth. And her bag. And the expression she has when she's going to be very calm about something because nobody else is going to be.

She sat with Wren at the long table in the kitchen of the house on the rise for an hour. Then she came out onto the porch and found me.

"It's well," she said. "Very well. About six weeks." She sat down on the step beside me. "An ordinary baby. Toby's and Wren's. It'll come in the ordinary time. Not one of yours." She almost smiled. "Thank goodness. I don't think I could take another one this year."

"Then what's wrong?"

Halloway looked at me.

"Nothing's wrong," she said. "Wren asked me to ask you something. She said she couldn't ask it herself."

Wren never finished her silver.

I've never written that down properly either. It's in the notebooks, in pieces, here and there. But I've never written it out.

Wren came to Scarecrow in the first wave, the same as Holt, the same as Juno and Rafe and Lena and all of them. With silver in her that the Project put there, that was never finished, that left her able to hear hearts and count them and very little else. When I learned how to finish the silver in people, I asked her. The way I asked everyone. And she said no.

Not because she was frightened. Because she was counting.

She said that if I finished her silver, she didn't know what she'd become. Hana's water became air. Anja's strength became something nobody can measure. Risa's lightning became flight. Wren said she didn't want to become something else. She said she liked being the one who counts. She said someone had to stay exactly the size they were, so the rest of us could tell how big we'd got.

So I didn't.

And she's stayed exactly the size she was. For years. Counting.

"She wants to know," said Halloway, "whether the unfinished silver is safe. For the baby." She looked at her hands. "She said she's never once wondered about it for herself. She's wondering now."

I didn't say anything for a long time.

Then I went inside.

Wren was at the long table. With her hands flat on it. With Toby beside her and Harriet on her lap and her face very calm.

I sat down across from her.

"Can I look?" I said.

She nodded.

So I looked.

Not inside the baby. I didn't need to. Halloway was right; it's well. Small and bright and very quick, the way all babies are at six weeks, humming Harriet's note back at her whenever she sings it.

I looked at Wren.

At the silver in her. Every path. The ones the Project laid down a long time ago, that should have joined and didn't. Some damaged. Some constrained. The way Enna's people's silver was constrained, by a recovery dependency, by an army's careful word for a leash. I'd seen this in Wren before, years ago, the first time I asked. I'd seen it in a great many people since.

I looked very carefully.

And then I took my hand away.

"It's safe," I said. "It's always been safe. It doesn't do anything. It just—" I stopped. "It's just unfinished. It's not reaching for anything. It's not waiting for anything. It's like a door somebody built and never hung."

Wren looked at me.

"Is it in the way?" she said. "For the baby?"

"No."

"Will the baby have it?"

I thought about that for a long time.

"I don't know," I said. "Harriet doesn't. Harriet's ordinary."

"Harriet sings," said Wren.

"Harriet sings because Toby's her father," I said. "And because she wants to. Not because of the silver."

Wren was quiet for a long time.

Then she said: "If I asked you to finish it now. After all this time. Would you?"

Toby went very still.

Harriet looked up at her mother.

I didn't answer straight away.

"Yes," I said. "If you asked. But not now."

"Why not now?"

"Because you're carrying," I said. "And I don't know what finishing it would do. To you or to the baby. Not because I think it'd hurt. Because I don't know." I looked at her. "I've learned to stop when I don't know. From Enna. From Andraste. From you, really. You've stayed exactly the size you were for years so the rest of us could tell how big we'd got." I put my hand flat on the table. "I'd like you to stay that size a little longer. Until after. And then, if you still want to, ask me again."

Wren looked at me for a long time.

"After," she said.

"After."

She nodded.

Then she started to cry. Not much. Not loudly. The way she does everything. Exactly the right amount.

"I was so frightened I'd made it unsafe," she said. "By saying no. All those years."

"You didn't."

"I know," said Wren. "Now I know." She wiped her face. "I'll count that too."

Toby's mother came up the hill that evening.

She lives in the third-wave houses, near Nan Vey. She came across with the thirty-one, with the stabilizer still in her, and sang Toby's name the first time she saw him on the red glass, before I'd finished her silver, before she could say anything else. She's sung his name every time she's seen him since. Every time. Not loudly. Just once. Like a note you play to find out if the instrument's still in tune.

She stood at the bottom of the porch steps and looked at Wren.

And sang Toby's name.

And then, very quietly, after it, a second note. One she'd never sung before. A little higher. A little shorter. Like a question.

Toby, on the porch rail, with his fiddle back across his knees, picked it up.

And carried it.

Very gently. The way he carries everything. Down the steps and across the boards and into the small bright quick thing under Wren's hand.

And it hummed back.

Toby's mother sat down on the bottom step and cried. Not much. Toby's family doesn't do much of anything loudly. Harriet went down the steps and sat beside her grandmother and held her hand, and the two of them sang the two notes back and forth for a long time, the old one and the new one, while Wren counted.

"Four," she said at last. To Toby. Very quietly. "There's four of us singing now. Five, with you."

Toby didn't say anything.

He just played the two notes. Once. Very softly. On the fiddle.

So they'd be written down somewhere.

Anja found out by picking up an oven.

I'll write it the way Maura told it. Because Maura was there. And because Maura tells it better than anyone, with flour on her hands and her voice going up at the end the way it does when something's so funny she can't believe it happened in her own bakery.

It was the fourteenth morning. Before dawn. At the bakery. Anja had come down to help Rory with the first bake, the way she does on the days Liam's on the early rotation and Rory the second has stayed over with his grandparents. She's very good at it. She can lift a whole tray of loaves in one hand, the big iron ones, because she finished her silver years ago and it made her stronger than anyone, and Rory says it saves him having to ask Taveth, who's good at nothing.

The big oven needed moving.

Not the oven Rory bakes in. The old one, at the back, that Rory built before he built the good ones, and that he keeps because he says it's sentimental and Maura says it's because he can't bear to admit it was badly made. It needed moving to make room for a new one. It weighs about as much as a small house.

Anja picked it up.

Not with both hands. With one. The way she lifts the trays. She picked up the old oven at the back of the bakery with one hand, and started to carry it to the door.

And then she stopped.

In the middle of the bakery. With an oven the weight of a small house in one hand.

And put the other hand on her middle.

And said, very calmly, to Maura: "Oh."

"She just stood there," said Maura. On the porch. That night. With her hands in her lap, still floury. "Holding the oven. With her other hand on her stomach. Looking at me." Maura started to laugh. "And I said, Anja, love, put the oven down. And she said, in a minute. And I said, Anja, put the oven down. And she said, Maura, I think I'm pregnant." Maura put her face in her hands. "Still holding the oven."

"Did she put it down?" said Risa.

"She put it down on Rory's foot," said Maura.

Rory's foot is fine. Anja's very careful, even when she's surprised. She put it down on Rory's foot very gently, so that he couldn't move until she picked it up again, which she did, after a minute, while he stood there in his flour-white apron with his mouth open, looking at her.

"Again?" he said.

"Again," said Anja.

And Rory, who's been married to Maura for longer than Sera's been alive, and has three children and three grandchildren and an oven on his foot, sat down on the bakery floor.

And laughed until he cried.

Liam found out when he came off the early rotation.

He walked into the bakery for breakfast, the way he does, and found his father sitting on the floor in the middle of it, laughing, and his mother laughing at the counter with her face in her hands, and his wife standing beside an oven in the wrong place with one hand on her middle and a very calm expression.

He looked at the three of them for a long time.

"Who's pregnant?" he said.

Rory the second wanted to know if it could set fires.

He's Liam's and Anja's, and they grow the ordinary way too, even though Liam's silver burns and Anja's is stronger than anyone. He sets fires. He's set fires since he was two. Small ones, mostly. Liam puts them out. Maura says it's the most Calder thing that's ever happened.

He came up the hill to the house on the rise that evening with his grandmother and stood in front of his mother on the porch and looked at her middle very seriously.

"Will it set fires?" he said.

"I don't know, love," said Anja.

"I hope it does," said Rory the second. "Then I'll have someone to set them with." He considered. "And Dad can put out two at once."

Liam, at the end of the porch, put his head in his hands.

Liam took Anja to the swings that night.

Not for a date. He said it wasn't a date. He said he just wanted to sit somewhere that wasn't a bakery or a porch, and the swings were the only place on Avalon he could think of where nobody would ask him anything.

I know because I was on the wheel, with Hana, on her second ride round, and we could see them from the top. Two small shapes on two swings at the end of the row, going out over the lake in the dark and coming back. Not high. Not fast. Side by side.

Hana told me afterward what they'd said. Anja told her. Anja tells Hana things; she says Hana's the only person on Avalon who never repeats anything, which isn't true, because Hana told me.

Liam had been very quiet all day. Since the bakery. Since his father on the floor and his mother at the counter and the oven on Rory's foot.

On the swings, he said: "I'm frightened."

Anja looked at him.

"Last time," said Liam, "with Rory. I spent the whole time sure I'd burn something. Every night. I used to lie awake taking the heat out of the room so it couldn't get anywhere near you." He swung out over the lake. Back. "I was sure something would go wrong. And it didn't. And he was fine. And he sets fires, and I put them out, and it's the best thing that's ever happened to me." He swung out again. "And I'm frightened all over again. Exactly the same."

Anja didn't say anything for a while.

Then she reached across. Between the two swings. And took hold of Liam's chain. One-handed. And stopped it.

Dead. In the air. Over the lake. With him on it.

Liam looked at her.

"I picked up an oven this morning," said Anja. "The big one. The bad one at the back that your father won't admit he made wrong. With one hand." She didn't let go of his chain. "I'm stronger than anyone on Avalon. I finished my silver years ago. I can stop a swing over a lake with you on it and not even notice." She looked at him. "And I'm frightened too. Exactly the same as last time."

Liam didn't say anything.

"Being strong doesn't stop it," said Anja. "I thought it would. When I finished. I thought: now I'll never be frightened of anything again." She shook her head. "It doesn't work like that. You're just frightened and strong at the same time."

She let go of the chain.

Liam swung back. Slowly. Toward the grass.

And then out again. Beside her.

"Frightened and strong," he said.

"Both," said Anja. "Okafor says. Write both down."

Hana said they stayed on the swings until Rory closed them. Not talking. Just going out over the lake and back, side by side. And that at some point Liam reached across and took hold of Anja's chain, the way she'd taken hold of his. Not to stop it. Just to hold on.

And she let him.

Sigmund and Jessa were trying.

I know that because everyone knows that. Because Ingrid told everyone. Not on purpose. Ingrid doesn't tell things on purpose. But Ingrid was at the long table in the kitchen of the house on the rise on the fifteenth evening, with Konrad beside her and Inga on her knee, when Halloway mentioned, very casually, that it was turning out to be a good year for babies.

And Ingrid said: "Not for everyone."

And Jessa, across the table, went very red.

And Sigmund put his face in his hands.

And everyone at the table understood at once.

"I'm sorry," said Ingrid. After. On the porch. To Jessa. Very quietly. "I didn't mean to. It came out."

"It's all right," said Jessa. "Everyone was going to know eventually."

"I'm your mother-in-law," said Ingrid. "I'm supposed to be discreet."

"You've never been discreet in your life," said Sigmund. From the step below. "You hushed a continent."

"That was discreet," said Ingrid. "Nobody heard a thing."

Jessa told me, later, the way she tells things. Very straight. Reaching for exactly the right word and not stopping until she found it.

"It's been four months," she said. "Since we started. After the ring." She looked at the porch boards. "Inga came so fast. The first time. We weren't even trying, really; it just happened, and then she was there, and Ingrid was in the garden, and Konrad came to the gate." She swallowed. "And now we want another one. Very much. And it isn't happening."

"Halloway?"

"Halloway says there's nothing wrong," said Jessa. "She says it just takes longer, sometimes. She says it's very ordinary." She looked at Sigmund, on the step, with Inga asleep against his chest. "She says it's harder when everyone round you is getting pregnant by picking up ovens."

"Do you want me to look?" I said.

Jessa looked at me for a long time.

Then she shook her head.

"No," she said. "Thank you. Not yet." She looked at Sigmund again. "Halloway says there's nothing wrong. I believe her. I don't want you to look and find something and fix it." She was quiet. "I want it to happen the way Inga did. On its own. When it's ready." She smiled, very slightly. "Like Hana's. The patient one."

"That could take a while."

"I know," said Jessa. "I'm good at reaching. I can wait for something to come into reach."

Konrad took Sigmund fishing the next day.

To the seventh lake. With the General. Who'd been told, very firmly, by Ingrid, that he was not to say anything about anything to anyone, and who stood on the jetty with his rod for three hours and didn't say a single word.

At the end of the three hours, the General said: "It took Luna's mother and me two years."

Sigmund looked at him.

"Two years," said the General. To the lake. "After we'd decided. Nothing. Every month. And then one morning she came down to breakfast and said Alaric, in a particular way, and I knew." He reeled in his line. "Two years. And then Luna. And she was worth every month of it."

He didn't say anything else.

Konrad said Sigmund didn't either. For the rest of the day. But he caught four fish, which was three more than he'd ever caught before, and on the way home he stopped at Pip's stall and won Jessa a ribbon on his sixth try.

Pip said that was a very good number. Pip said she'd write it on the board.

Jessa didn't put it in her hair.

She tied it round Inga's wrist. Very loosely. A pale green one. While Inga slept on the porch boards between her and Sigmund in the dusk.

"For her," she said. When Sigmund looked at her. "So she knows somebody's been thinking about her having a brother or a sister." She smoothed the ribbon flat. "So she's ready. Whenever it is."

Sigmund looked at the ribbon on his daughter's wrist for a long time.

Then he reached out, very carefully, the way his father moves when he's about to do something that matters, and put two fingers on it.

A very small spark went into the ribbon. Blue. Lightning, the way his mother's is, and his sister's.

It didn't burn anything. It just stayed there, very faintly, in the green, the way a light stays in a window when someone's left it on for you.

"There," said Sigmund. "Now it'll know where to find her."

The weddings were the Mom Squad's idea.

I'll write that down, because I've been told to, very firmly, by all five of them.

There were three couples who'd asked on the wheel and the roller coaster and the north field. Genny and Callum. Garnet and Rowan. Brock and Saska. And all three were planning, separately, three different weddings, in three different places, with three different sets of grandmothers arguing about bread.

Mother put a stop to it.

At the long table. In the kitchen of the house on the rise. On the eighteenth evening. With the Mom Squad round her and Nan Vey at the end with her iron and Marian Haddon with a basket of beans and Teshka with her blade across her knees.

"One wedding," said Mother. "Three couples. In the spring. On the north field. At dawn." She looked down the table at the six of them. "Brock and Saska wanted dawn on the north field. Genny and Callum wanted the wheel. Garnet and Rowan wanted the edge of the interceptor field." She folded her hands. "The north field is next to the interceptor field. And Keir says he can move the wheel."

"He can't move the wheel," said Garnet.

"He says he can," said Mother. "He says it'll take a week. He says he's been wanting an excuse."

Genny and Garnet looked at each other.

They didn't say anything. They didn't need to. Eleven minutes apart. They've been looking at each other across tables and knowing what the other one's thinking since before either of them could talk.

"Together," said Genny.

"Together," said Garnet.

"Together," said Rowan and Callum. At once. And then Callum laughed last.

Brock didn't say anything. He went very slightly iron at the edges. Saska, beside him, said: "He's saying yes. A heartbeat ago."

Mother smiled.

"Good," she said. "Then that's settled." She looked at Nan Vey. "Three couples. That's six people to iron for."

"Seven," said Nan Vey. "Callum creases. I'll have to do him twice."

The Mom Squad took over the wedding.

I should have known they would. Mother said one wedding at the long table and the next morning there were five grandmothers in the kitchen of the house on the rise with a slate. Not Okafor's. Their own. Kyria had made it. She said if the Marshal could have a slate, the Mom Squad could have one too.

It had three columns.

Hyrran. Barrow. Thirty-three.

Because Saska is Vaeli, and on the Barrow nobody was allowed to marry, so Teshka said there was no Vaeli way to do it, and that they would have to invent one, and that she'd like it to involve a great many people standing very still in rows and then all moving at once, so the children would know they didn't have to stand in rows any more.

And Rowan and Callum are from Level Thirty-three, where you marry in the laundry, Nan Vey said, among the presses, because it's the only room on the level big enough and warm enough, and everyone brings one thing they've ironed, and you give it to the couple, and they're dressed in everything everyone's ironed by the end.

And Genny and Garnet are Dasks, and Dasks don't have a way. Mother said Father married her in a quartermaster's tent behind the lines with a chaplain who'd lost his book and had to make the words up. She said she couldn't remember a single word he said. She said she remembered Father's face the whole time.

And Kyria said that none of that mattered, because a Hyrrani wedding requires a fight, and she wasn't having her son-in-law's sisters married without one.

"Genny doesn't fight," said Mother.

"Genny climbed a tower on the ring with a tray on her back," said Kyria. "She fights."

They argued for four days.

The five of them. At the long table. With Nan Vey at the end with her iron and Marian Haddon with her beans and a recipe Maura said came from the old floors for a cake nobody on Avalon had made since the domes closed. Teshka shouted in Vaeli. Kyria shouted in Hyrrani. Ingrid hushed them both. Maura kept bringing more bread.

On the fifth day, Mother put down her cup.

"All of it," she said.

Everyone looked at her.

"The rows," said Mother. "And then everyone moving at once. And everyone bringing one thing they've ironed. And a fight." She looked at Kyria. "A very short one. To the yield. With the children watching. So they know the people they love can stand up to each other and still be there after." She folded her hands. "And no book. Somebody makes up the words. Whoever's there. On the day."

The kitchen was very quiet.

"That's not a wedding," said Kyria. "That's every wedding."

"Yes," said Mother. "That's the point."

Kyria looked at her for a long time.

Then she wrote it on the slate. Under all three columns. In Hyrrani, very large.

Dot translated it for me later.

All of it.

I said it that night.

On the long porch. In order. Down the rail and off the steps and onto the grass.

When I got to Wren, at the end of the rail, between Toby and the post, I said it to her. And to Harriet. And then, lower, to the small bright quick thing that hums back when Harriet sings.

Wren counted it.

"One more," she said. Very quietly. "There. That's right now."

When I got to Anja, I said it to her. And to Rory the second. And then lower. And Anja laughed, very softly, and said, "Don't make it set fires."

"I can't make it do anything."

"I know," said Anja. "Say it anyway."

When I got to Sigmund and Jessa, on the step, with Inga asleep between them, I said it to both of them. And to Inga.

And then I said it, very quietly, to the space beside Inga. Where nobody was yet.

Jessa looked at me.

"For when," I said.

Jessa didn't say anything. She just reached out, the way she reaches for everything, and took Sigmund's hand.

Dot pulsed the relay at the hour.

And Hearth answered.

And then, after it, slowly, a picture. One line at a time. Garnet drew it as it came.

A garden. Small. With a low stone wall. And in it, Isolde, kneeling, with her hands in the soil, planting something.

And under it, in the old dictionary:

Beans. From your Marian. Dot sent the shape. We grew them from the shape.

They came up.

Marian Haddon cried when Dot read it out.

Then she went and found Brock, and told him, and Brock went iron to the hairline, and Saska said that meant he was very pleased.

Ilka came down from the Meridian on the last night of the month.

She doesn't, often. She sits at the relay in the map room at the heart of the main ring, with the spine-queen laid along the floor behind her, and listens. To everything. All the way to the ring. Further.

She came and found me on the roof. Where Andraste was, with her blade across her knees, the white ribbon on the hilt.

"I'm not going to put it on the slate," said Ilka. "Okafor asked me not to. Not yet." She sat down against the chimney. "But I wanted you to know."

"Know what?"

"The far side of the ring," said Ilka. "Where the towers went out." She was quiet for a long time. "They're still going. One every few days. Very slowly. From the far edge in." She looked out at the dark. "And past them, past the ring, where the Scarecrow queen heard the quiet. It's not as quiet as it was."

Andraste turned her head.

"What does that mean?" she said.

"I don't know," said Ilka. "Not yet. It's very far. It's very faint." She put her hands round her knees. "But there's something there now that wasn't. Where it used to be nothing." She looked at me. "It sounds like a great many things breathing at once."

Nobody said anything for a long time.

Then Andraste put her hand flat on the roof. Beside mine.

"After the weddings," she said. Very quietly. "Whatever it is. After."

Ilka looked at her.

"Okafor says the same," she said. "She says the children are getting married in the spring, and Wren and Anja are carrying, and nothing is getting in the way of that." She stood up. "She says she'll know what it is when it's close enough to have a name."

She went back down the ladder.

Andraste didn't say anything for a long time.

Then she lay down on the roof. On her back. With her blade beside her. Looking up.

"After," she said again.

Days 4232–4262. Again.

Wren stopped me on the porch for the first time ever: she'd been counting one too many for a month. Harriet hummed and something hummed back. Toby knelt and couldn't speak. Wren asked if her unfinished silver was safe for the baby; it is, it's a door nobody hung; she asked me to finish it, and I said after. She'll count that too. Anja picked up the old oven one-handed and said oh, and put it down on Rory's foot; Rory sat on the floor and laughed till he cried; Rory the second hopes it sets fires. Sigmund and Jessa are trying; Ingrid said it at the table; the General said two years, and worth every month. Jessa doesn't want me to look. Mother: one wedding, three couples, the north field in spring. Keir is moving the wheel. Isolde grew Marian's beans from the shape.