Chapter 416 Mine

I wasn't allowed out of bed for a week.

That was Hana. Not Halloway, though Halloway agreed with her. Not Mother, though Mother came up the stairs every morning with the teapot and stood in the doorway and looked at me the way she looked at me when I was small and had done something with the garden wall that I shouldn't have.

Hana.

She sat in the chair by the window with her hands in her lap and the air going round her, very slowly, and every time I tried to get up she looked at me. Just looked.

"Seven weeks," she said, on the second day. When I'd got as far as putting my feet on the floor. "I hid them for seven weeks. In the dome. Because my family needed the stipend." She didn't raise her voice. "The last one was in my head instead of my nose."

I put my feet back in the bed.

"You're not hiding anything," said Hana. "Not from me. Not ever."

So I lay there.

And the house on the rise went on round me. The way it does. Doors. Feet on the stairs. Maura's bread through the floorboards. Children on the porch.

And Kesh.

I want to write about Kesh. Because something happened to Kesh that week, while I was lying in bed with Hana in the chair by the window, and I saw some of it, and everyone else saw the rest.

She was seven weeks old.

Small. Very small. The smallest of all of mine, Halloway says, when they're born. Pale hair, like Ingrid's. Silver round her eyes. A cloud over her head the size of a thumbnail, white, flickering, that went very still whenever Ingrid was near.

She'd been quiet. Since the day she was born. She came out quiet, Ingrid said, on the red glass, the way Risa went quiet at the ford. She lay in her basket at the foot of the arch on the interceptor field every morning and looked up at the sky and didn't cry. She looked at everyone as if she were counting them.

Halloway said she grew the ordinary way. So far. The slow way. Halloway said it was too early to say.

I'd said I didn't mind. I'd had quick ones. I'd like one slow one, for a while.

On the third morning I was in bed, Risa went down to the interceptor field without her.

Just once. Just for the dawn flight. Ingrid had Kesh on the porch, on her knee, with Konrad beside her on the bench reading the names off the back of the sheet the way he does now, every morning, quietly, to himself, before he goes down to the stool.

Risa kissed Kesh on the head. And went down the hill to the field. And shut her eyes. And flew the wing.

And on the porch, Kesh frowned.

I didn't see it. I was upstairs. But I heard it.

Everyone on the rise heard it.

Thunder.

Not very loud. Not the way Risa's thunder is, when she's angry, that you feel in your teeth from the far side of the north field. Small. A very small, very cross rumble. Coming from the porch.

From a cloud the size of a thumbnail.

I got as far as the window before Hana looked at me.

So I stood at the window. And looked down at the porch.

Ingrid was sitting very still on the bench with Kesh on her knee. Konrad had stopped reading. And over Kesh's head, her cloud wasn't white any more.

It was grey.

Dark grey. Swollen. Twice the size it had been. Rumbling. With a small flicker of light going round inside it, very fast, the way the light goes round inside a storm before it breaks.

And under it, Kesh was frowning.

Not crying. Kesh doesn't cry. Frowning. With her whole small face. At the sky over the interceptor field, where her mother was.

The way Risa frowns at the sky before a storm.

Ingrid put her hand out.

Flat. Palm down. Over the cloud. The way she does. To make it still.

And it didn't go still.

I've never seen anything not go still for Ingrid. Six Hands at Cassel went still for Ingrid. Forty-one pieces of the eldest on Morvane. Every Hand that came down through the lid over Tor Isca.

Kesh's cloud rumbled at her.

And flickered. Brighter. Right under Ingrid's hand.

Ingrid took her hand away.

And looked at her granddaughter for a long time.

And then she laughed.

I'd heard Ingrid laugh before. Not often. Once on the porch, the night Risa said here comes the Hush. Once at the wedding.

Not like this.

She laughed so hard she had to put her other hand over her mouth. Sitting on the bench on the porch of the house on the rise with a seven-week-old baby on her knee frowning at the sky, and a small grey storm over the baby's head that wouldn't do what it was told.

"Konrad," said Ingrid. When she could. "Konrad. Look at her."

Konrad was looking.

"That's Risa," said Ingrid. "That's exactly Risa. Thirty years ago. In the nursery at the north dome. The first time I left the room."

Konrad didn't say anything for a long time.

"I wasn't there," he said. Very quietly. "The first time you left the room."

"No," said Ingrid. "You were in an office." She looked down at Kesh. "You're here now. Look at her."

So Konrad looked.

Down on the interceptor field, Risa opened her eyes.

She felt it. Of course she did. Through the silver. Through the thread that goes between her and Kesh, that Halloway says is the same thread that went between her and Wheel before Kesh was born.

She stood on the edge of the field with the wing up over her head and turned round.

And looked up the hill at the porch.

At the small grey storm over the bench.

And I watched her face from the bedroom window. And I've known Risa a long time. Since the dome. I've seen her face do a great many things.

I've never seen it do that.

She brought the wing down.

All forty. In the middle of the dawn flight. Onto the field. In a long line. Very fast. Very neat.

And walked up the hill.

Not ran. Walked. Very straight. In her flying leathers. With her one grey cloud over her head. Past the town under the garden wall, past the north field, up the steps of the porch.

And stopped in front of the bench.

Kesh looked up at her.

And stopped frowning.

And the cloud over her head stopped rumbling. And went smaller. And paler. And white again. The size of a thumbnail. Flickering.

Satisfied.

Risa looked down at her daughter for a long time.

Then she sat down on the bench. On Ingrid's other side. And held out her arms. And Ingrid gave her Kesh.

And Risa held her up. In front of her face. At arm's length. And looked her in the eye.

"Don't you," said Risa, "ever, do that to the wing again."

Kesh looked at her.

Very serious. With silver round her eyes. Counting her.

And then her cloud flickered. Once. Very bright.

Risa made a sound.

Ingrid says it was the same sound. The one Ingrid made when Risa said here comes the Hush. The one the eldest made when Ingrid hushed the forty-one.

And then Risa put Kesh against her shoulder and put her face in her daughter's pale hair and didn't say anything for a long time.

"Mine," said Risa. In the end. Very muffled. "Oh, she's mine."

That was the third morning.

By the end of the week, everyone on Avalon knew.

I'll write what they told me. Because I was in bed for most of it, and Hana let me hear it but not see it.

On the fourth morning, Risa took Kesh down to the field again. In the basket. At the foot of the arch. And shut her eyes and flew the wing.

And Kesh lay in the basket and watched. And when the wing went left, her cloud went left. A little. Over the basket. And when the wing went up, her cloud went up. A little.

Arcturus was sitting on the edge of the field with his wings in their sling, the way he does every morning. He watched the cloud for a long time.

Then he went and got Rowan.

And Rowan watched it too.

"She's flying them," said Rowan. Very quietly. "Isn't she."

"No," said Arcturus. "She's following." He watched the cloud go left. "She's learning."

On the fifth morning, small Sigmund's cloud rained on her.

The way it used to rain on Wheel, before she was born. A little. Warm. Over the basket. Because small Sigmund was sitting beside the basket guarding her, the way he does, with his spark going round his ear, and he'd fallen asleep, and his cloud had drifted.

Kesh's cloud rumbled.

And small Sigmund's cloud stopped raining.

Immediately. All at once. Mid-drop. And went back over small Sigmund's head, very fast, the way a dog goes back to its basket when it's been shouted at.

Small Sigmund woke up.

"Mama," he said. "She told my cloud off."

"Yes," said Risa. With her eyes shut. Flying. "She does that."

"I didn't know clouds could get told off," said small Sigmund.

"Neither did I," said Risa. "Until I was three, and I told the rain off on the north dome, and it stopped for a week, and your grandfather had to sign something about it."

Konrad, on his stool on the red glass, at the edge of the field, didn't look up from the sheet.

But Dot says he was smiling.

On the sixth morning, Halloway said it.

She came down to the field with her bag. And knelt down beside the basket. And looked at Kesh for a long time, over her spectacles. And put her hand on Kesh's wrist. And closed her eyes.

Then she opened them.

"She's quick," said Halloway.

Risa opened her eyes.

"You said ordinary," said Risa.

"I said so far," said Halloway. "I said too early to say." She looked down at the basket. At Kesh, frowning up at her. At the small grey cloud. "It's not too early now. She was waiting. She's been waiting all along." She took her hand off Kesh's wrist. "She does that too."

"Does what?"

"Waits," said Halloway. "Until everyone's been counted. And then goes all at once." She stood up. Her knees cracked. "I wonder where she gets that."

On the seventh morning, I was allowed out of bed.

Hana walked me down the hill. With her arm through mine. As if I were ninety. Past the town under the garden wall, past the north field. To the interceptor field.

Where everyone was.

Not the wing. The wing was down. In a long line on the field, forty of them, with their pilots standing beside them. Rowan. Callum, out of the long ward for the first time, with his left arm in Maura's bandages and Nan Vey at his elbow. Arcturus. All of them.

Watching the basket.

Risa was standing beside it.

With her eyes open. Not flying. Just standing there. With her arms folded. With her one grey cloud over her head.

Ingrid was on the bench at the foot of the arch. Konrad beside her. Dory and small Sigmund on the grass. Mother, with the teapot.

And in the basket, Kesh.

Seven weeks old. Frowning.

At the nearest interceptor.

"What's she doing?" I said.

Nobody answered.

Then Risa said, without looking round: "Watch."

So I watched.

At our wedding, on the north field, Risa flew two empty interceptors from the ground. With her eyes shut. Standing in the rows in everything, with Nan Vey's ironing on her, and the whole of Avalon watching. Two interceptors with nobody in them, going up off the interceptor field, round the north field, over the rows, very low, and down again. Perfectly. As if two invisible people were flying them.

Nobody had ever seen anything like it. Rowan says the wing still talks about it.

Kesh shut her eyes.

And the nearest interceptor moved.

Not much. Not off the ground. An inch. Maybe two. Its nose came up off the field, very slowly, with nobody in it, the way a dog lifts its head when it hears its name.

And hung there.

Trembling.

Nobody breathed.

It went up another inch.

And then Kesh's cloud flickered, very bright. And she opened her eyes. And frowned at it. Furious. The way you'd frown at a shoe you couldn't get on.

And it came down.

Clunk.

Nobody said anything for a long time.

Then Rowan started laughing.

And then Callum, very carefully, because of his arm. And then the whole wing. Forty pilots standing on the interceptor field beside their ships, laughing. And Arcturus, who doesn't laugh. And Nan Vey, who never laughs, who said badly under her breath very loudly.

And Ingrid.

And Risa didn't laugh.

She knelt down. Beside the basket. On the red glass.

And picked Kesh up. And held her up. Facing the interceptor. The one that had gone up two inches and come down.

"That was terrible," said Risa. Very seriously. To her daughter. "Your nose was too high. You didn't level off. You came down crooked."

Kesh frowned at her.

"We'll do it again tomorrow," said Risa.

And then she laughed.

Ingrid came and stood beside them. And put her thin hand on Kesh's head. Under the cloud.

And this time, it went still.

"There," said Ingrid. "She'll let me now. Now you're here."

Risa looked at her mother.

"Is that what I was like?" she said.

"Yes," said Ingrid. "Exactly that. Exactly." She didn't take her hand away. "You flew a spoon across the nursery when you were ten months old. Badly. Into the wall." She smiled. "And you never once cried. You just frowned at things until they did what you wanted."

Risa didn't say anything.

"And then I wasn't there," said Ingrid. Very quietly. "For the rain, or any of it after. I was in a room."

She looked down at Kesh.

"I'm here for this one," said Ingrid.

I sat down on the bench beside Konrad.

Hana let me. She sat down on my other side, with her arm still through mine.

Konrad had the sheet in his hands. The first one. Turned to the back. To the very bottom. Under Yet and And the room and Hearth. All and He bled.

He wasn't writing anything. He was just looking at it.

"I signed it," he said. Without looking up. "The order. About the rain. When she was three." He turned the sheet over in his hands. "The north dome council asked for an assessment. Of a child who could stop weather. I signed it." A pause. "I never read it."

I didn't say anything.

"I'm going to read everything now," said Konrad. "For the rest of my life." He looked across the red glass at his daughter, kneeling on the field with his granddaughter held up in front of an interceptor. "Every word."

That afternoon, Hana let me go west.

Not alone. Nobody's let me go anywhere alone since the red glass. Dinraal came for me at noon, through the new arch Kyria's cutters put on the plain beyond Thera, the one that goes straight to the new valley, so nobody has to walk round the sea.

I'd made it. All of it. And I'd never seen it in daylight.

It was full.

That's the first thing. When I made it, it was empty. Rock and soil and river and bridges and roofs, and the wind coming down off the new mountains, and nobody. Now there were four hundred and twelve million people in it.

Walking on the bridges. Sitting by the fountains. On the roofs, in the gardens Isolde grew, kneeling in the soil the way people kneel in their own gardens, pulling up something that shouldn't be there. Children in their school clothes in rows, holding hands, singing the song about a garden.

The bridges were singing too. In the wind off the mountains.

Nobody looked at me. Not the way people look at me on the tithe worlds. They were busy. They were home.

An old woman on a roof by the river stopped me. Dinraal says she's the one with the moss. She leaned over the edge of her roof and looked down at me for a long time, and then said something in Hearth's language, very sharply, and went back to her moss.

"What did she say?" I said.

Dinraal didn't answer at once.

"She says," he said, in our language, slowly, "you put the drain on the wrong side." A pause. "She says it is very nearly right, and she will forgive you."

He took me to the house.

Up the hill. Into the old quarter, where the houses lean together. To a house of grey stone with a silver roof, and a garden on the roof, with a small mound of new soil in the middle of it where Isolde had planted the seed.

Nothing showing yet. Isolde says it'll be a year before anything shows. She says that's the right length of time.

Dinraal took me up the stairs. To the second floor. To the back.

To the window.

He stood beside it for a long time and didn't say anything.

Then he put his elbow on the sill. In the worn place. Where it goes.

And looked out. Over the garden at the back. Over the roofs going down to the river. At the bridges. At the new mountains. At the ring of nine stations very high in Avalon's afternoon sky, bright, with one of them only half.

Tiamat's keeping it like that. She told Okafor. She says she'll never finish it. She says the half that isn't there is the part that listened.

"The crack," said Dinraal. In the end.

He touched the third pane. Where the crack is. The crack I put there because it was there in what he showed me through the long table.

"My father did that," said Dinraal. "Before I was born. My mother says he leaned on it too hard, the night she told him she was carrying me. He said he would fix it in the morning." His silver hand stayed on the glass. "In the morning he went to the edge of the sky."

I didn't say anything.

"I never let anyone fix it," said Dinraal.

He took his hand away from the glass. And turned round. And looked at me. For a long time. With his father's silver on his wrists.

Then he said one word. In our language. The way Isolde taught him, and Mother taught her.

"Thank you."

That night, I went to the children's room.

I should explain the children's room.

It's the big room at the back of the house on the rise, on the ground floor, by the courtyard. Where the children sleep. All of them. In a heap, mostly, on the rug, because they won't sleep anywhere else. Dory and Trevor and Ash and small Sigmund and Efua and Kwame and Elin and Goldie and Corin and Thessaly and Abena. And now Kesh, in her basket by the door, because Risa says she's too small for the heap.

Vessa sleeps with Andraste. Andraste says a First Blade's daughter sleeps beside her First Blade until she can hold a blade herself.

I went in very late. The way I do.

And sat on the floor.

They were asleep in the heap.

All of them. In the middle of the rug. A great warm pile of children, arms and legs everywhere, with Pebble across the bottom of it and the old brown dog against the wall. Dory on the outside, the way she always is, with one hand out, checking everyone in her sleep.

And in the middle of the heap, the four.

Corin and Thessaly. Andraste's. A little over a year old. With her short black hair, both of them, and her way of sleeping with one fist closed as if there's a blade in it.

Elin. Luna's. With frost on her eyelashes. Always. Even asleep.

Goldie. Sera's. Warm. Always. Glowing faintly at the hands.

They sleep together. Always. Since the first night, Andraste says, when Corin and Thessaly were born on the ridge and Elin and Goldie woke in the house on the rise and looked at the door. In the middle of the heap. Touching. Warm one side and cold the other. In a little weather of their own.

The four small ones who make doors.

Give us the one we call world-breaker.

Give us the four small ones who make doors.

I'd always known which four.

I want to say that. I'd always known. The day the houses said it, into the voice, at the long table, the day Abena was nine days old, I knew which four. Everyone at the long table knew.

But I'd never thought it all the way down. What they wanted them for.

Until Halcro. Until the bow of a ship on the floor of a dead moon, and a black box the size of a child's coffin, and a girl of seven inside it with a collar round her throat, holding one door. To one place. Because that was all a key could do.

Not well enough, said the old report. Find the ones who make new doors.

I sat on the floor of the children's room in the dark and looked at the four of them asleep in the middle of the heap.

And I thought about boxes.

I don't know how long I sat there.

Long enough that the door opened behind me, very quietly, and someone came in.

It was the girl.

The girl from the box. From the bow of the first ship. The one who said which way.

She doesn't sleep on the long ward any more. Ingrid took her up to the house on the rise on the tenth day, and she sleeps in the little room at the top of the stairs, the one with the window, next to Ingrid and Konrad's. Ingrid says she walks at night. Ingrid says she's walked every night since she came, very quietly, all over the house, and stands in doorways, and looks.

Ingrid says she's never once gone outside.

She stood in the doorway of the children's room.

In the nightdress Maura made her. Grey, because she asked for grey, because she said she didn't know any other colours yet. With her hand at her throat, where the collar was. With the silver round her eyes very bright in the dark.

She looked at the heap for a long time.

At the four, in the middle.

Then she came in. Very quietly. And sat down on the floor beside me.

We didn't say anything for a long time.

She doesn't talk much. She has more words now; Ingrid's been teaching her, and Dot gives her the rest. But she doesn't use them much. She looks at things. The way Kesh does. As if she's counting them.

Then she said something.

Very quietly. In the little of our language she has.

"They make doors," she said.

I didn't say anything.

"I can hear it," she said. "When they sleep." She didn't take her eyes off the four. "Little ones. New ones. Not the same door. Every time a different one." She was quiet. "Opening. And they go a little way through. And then they shut it. And come back."

I looked at the heap. At Corin's closed fist. At the frost on Elin's eyelashes.

"Where do they go?" I said.

"I don't know," said the girl. "Somewhere new. Every time." She touched her throat. "Not like me. I only go one place."

She looked at me then. For the first time since she came in.

"Are they keys?" she said.

I didn't answer for a long time.

Because she'd asked it the way she asks everything. Very plainly. Not frightened. As if she was asking whether it was going to rain.

And because the true answer was: that's what the houses wanted them for.

"No," I said.

She looked at me.

"They're children," I said. "Like you."

"I was a key," said the girl.

"You were a child," I said. "Somebody put you in a box. That's all. That's the only difference there's ever been."

She looked at the heap for a long time.

Then she said something I didn't expect.

"Don't let anyone put them in a box."

"Nobody will," I said.

She looked at me. Very steadily. With the silver round her eyes.

"Promise," she said.

It was the first thing she'd ever asked anyone for. Ingrid told me afterward. In all the days since the bow of the ship. Not food. Not a bed. Not a colour for her nightdress. She'd been given all of those. She'd never asked for anything.

"I promise," I said.

She nodded. Once. The way Risa nods.

And then she did something else I didn't expect.

She got up off the floor. And went to the heap. Very quietly. And knelt down at the edge of it, beside Dory, who was on the outside with her hand out, checking everyone.

And Dory, asleep, reached out and checked her.

The way she checks everyone. A small hand on her arm. There you are.

The girl went very still.

Then, very slowly, the way the boy reached for Dinraal's silver hand in the bow of the second ship, she lay down.

At the edge of the heap. Beside Dory. With Dory's hand on her arm.

And closed her eyes.

I sat on the floor until dawn.

Watching them. All of them. Twelve, now, in the heap, and Kesh in her basket by the door.

At some point in the night, I heard what the girl heard.

A door.

Very small. Very new. Opening. Somewhere in the middle of the heap, where the four were. Not an arch. Not anything I could see. Just a feeling, the way Vessa's arch felt, on the ridge, like stepping off a stair you thought was there.

And then shutting.

And a moment later, another one. Different. Somewhere else.

And then shutting.

And then, the last one before dawn, a door I knew.

I knew it the way you know your own front step in the dark.

Because it opened onto here. Onto the children's room. Onto the heap. From somewhere a very little way off.

From the edge of the heap. Where the girl was lying, with Dory's hand on her arm.

The four had made a door to her.

In their sleep. A small one. New. From the middle of the heap to the edge of it. Two feet. Maybe three. The shortest door anyone has ever made.

And through it, very faintly, I felt them check her.

All four. The way Dory does. There you are.

The girl didn't wake up.

But her hand came away from her throat. For the first time since the bow of the ship. And lay on the rug, open, beside Dory's.

In the morning, at breakfast, at the long table in the kitchen of the house on the rise, she told Ingrid her name.

She'd chosen it, she said. In the night.

Ingrid told us. At the table. Through Dot, because the girl said it in her own language, the one she had before the box, the one she didn't know she remembered until she woke up with it.

Ingrid's voice went.

"She says it's a word," said Ingrid. "From before. From the language she had when she was very small." She looked at the girl, who was eating Maura's bread, very carefully, with both hands. "She says it means: the one who comes home."

"What is it?" said Mother.

The girl looked up from her bread.

And said it.

Dot gave it to us. It doesn't go into our letters very well. The nearest anyone's got is Garnet, who wrote it on the slate by the kitchen door, under the ten names and HONORY and Soon.

Ione.

Kesh, in her basket by the stove, frowned at the slate.

Her cloud rumbled.

Ione looked at her across the kitchen. Very seriously. Counting her.

And then, for the first time anyone in the house on the rise had ever seen, Ione smiled.

After breakfast, we all went down to the interceptor field.

Because Risa had said again tomorrow, and Risa doesn't say things she doesn't mean.

Ione came too. Holding Ingrid's hand. Outside. For the first time since the bow of the ship. Down the hill, past the town under the garden wall, past the north field, under a sky that doesn't stop. She didn't look up. Not once. She looked at Ingrid's hand, and at the path, and at Kesh in the basket Risa was carrying.

And at the bottom of the hill, on the red glass, she sat down on the bench beside Konrad and held onto the edge of it with both hands.

Konrad didn't say anything. He moved the sheets onto his other knee so she'd have room.

Risa put the basket down.

At the foot of the nearest interceptor. The same one. And knelt beside it. And shut her own eyes. Not flying. Just shut. So Kesh could see how.

"Level," said Risa. Very quietly. "Nose down a little. Then up. Then hold it."

Kesh frowned at the interceptor.

And shut her eyes.

It went up four inches.

Nose first. Then the tail, after it. Not crooked. Level. And hung there, trembling, in the morning light, over the red glass, with nobody in it.

For a count of nine. Wren counted. From the long ward. Out loud. Because she couldn't help it.

And then came down.

Not clunk. Gently. The way Tiamat put the ship down at Halcro. As if it were full of eggs.

Kesh opened her eyes.

And didn't frown.

Risa opened hers. And looked at her daughter. And didn't say anything for a long time.

"Better," said Risa.

And on the bench, holding onto the edge of it with both hands, Ione let go with one of them, very slowly, and looked up.

At the sky.

Just for a moment.

Then she looked back down at the bench. At her hand on the edge of it. And at Konrad's sheets on his knee, the first one turned to the back, with all the names on it, very small.

"Is my name on there?" she said. Very quietly.

Konrad looked at her for a long time.

Then he took out his pen. And wrote it. At the very bottom. Under everything.

Ione. Home.

Days 4631–4644. Mine.

Hana kept me in bed for a week: you're not hiding anything, not from me. Risa went down to the field without Kesh once, and Kesh frowned at the sky, and her cloud thundered and wouldn't go still for Ingrid. Ingrid laughed: that's exactly Risa. Risa brought the wing down mid-flight and walked up the hill. Mine. Kesh told small Sigmund's cloud off. Halloway: she's quick; she was waiting. On the seventh morning she lifted an empty interceptor two inches and dropped it. Risa: terrible; again tomorrow. Konrad: I'm going to read everything now. The four who make doors are Corin and Thessaly and Elin and Goldie, asleep in the middle of the heap. The girl asked: are they keys? Don't let anyone put them in a box. I promised. Dory checked her. The four made a door to her, three feet long. Her name is Ione: the one who comes home.