Chapter 418 Two Hundred Days

Mother brought the slate up to the map room.

She didn't knock. Nobody knocks on the map room. She came up the stairs from the kitchen with the slate in both hands, the way she'd carry a tray, and walked to the long table, and put it down in the middle of it. Between Okafor's chalk and Asha's instruments. Face down.

Everyone looked at it.

On the back, where it had always been bare, in Mother's hand, in chalk, very large:

1,960.

"We're going," said Mother.

She didn't sit down. She stood at the end of the long table, small, in her apron, with the dark blue ribbon in her hair and the grey Vaeli one beside it. And looked down the table at Okafor.

"All of us," said Mother. "Every name on the front of that slate." She put her hand flat on the back of it. "I don't care how. I don't care where it is. I don't care what's in the building." Her voice didn't change at all. "There are one thousand, nine hundred and sixty children in a line on a grey world. And the line is going into a building. And the children go in last."

She looked round the table.

"Not on my slate," said Mother.

Nobody said anything.

Then Okafor picked up her chalk.

"I know," she said.

"Then how?" said Mother.

"That's what I'm sitting here for," said Okafor. "That's what the long table is for, Dorothy. How." She didn't raise her voice either. She never does. "You've told me what. You always tell me what. You told me what on the porch the first year and I've been working out how ever since." She put the chalk down. "Sit down. Have some tea. And let me work out how."

Mother looked at her for a long time.

Then she sat down.

Rhiannon put a cup in front of her. Out of nowhere. With bread.

So we worked out how.

The first thing was where.

Asha's map was still in the air over the long table. Two thousand, eight hundred and six silver points. Every world Ithel remembered. Going out past the edge of Okafor's slate, past Isca, past anything, very far, into the dark.

And one of them was the grey world. With the black building. Where the lines went in.

We didn't know which.

"I won't ask him," said Isolde.

At once. Before anyone else could say it. With her hand on her middle, which she's started doing without noticing, the way Andraste did, the way they all do.

"I won't," said Isolde. "Not to hold a door. Not to point. Not to look at a map and say which. He's five. He was in a box." She looked at Okafor. "You said it yourself. Not one child. Ever. As a key."

"I did," said Okafor.

"Pointing is a key," said Isolde. "Telling us which way is a key. That's what they asked him. Every time. Which way."

Nobody argued.

Okafor didn't write anything down. She sat at the end of the long table and looked at the map in the air for a long time, and didn't say anything at all.

Ithel came in that evening.

On his own. Up the stairs from the kitchen, where he'd been eating supper with Ione at the end of the long table, the way they do now. He came into the map room very quietly and stood in the doorway.

Not in the room. Not out of it. The way the Overseer stands.

The Overseer was in the doorway already. With the dog. It moved over. Very slightly. So there was room for both of them.

Ithel looked up at it.

The dog sniffed his hand. And lay down across his feet, the way the First Weapon does.

He looked at the map for a long time.

At all of it. Two thousand, eight hundred and six silver points. Every one a world he'd been to in a box, holding a door. Every one with people on it in collars.

Isolde was at the long table. She stood up very fast when she saw him.

"Ithel," she said.

He didn't look at her. He was looking at the map.

Then he said something. In Hearth's language. Very quietly.

And Isolde sat down again.

"He says," said Isolde. After a long time. Very carefully. "He's not pointing."

Nobody said anything.

"He says pointing is when someone asks you which way," said Isolde. "And you tell them. And then they make you hold it." Her voice was very steady. "He says nobody asked him."

She looked at her son. In the doorway. With the Overseer's dog across his feet.

"He says he's telling."

He walked into the room.

Into the middle of it. Under the map. Under all the silver points. And looked up. A small boy of five in a nightshirt Maura made him, standing under two thousand worlds.

And put his hand up.

Not pointing. Isolde says it's different. She says on Hearth there's a way you hold your hand when you're showing someone a flower in a garden, so they'll see it. Palm up. Open. Under it. As if you're holding it up to the light.

He held his hand up like that. Under one silver point.

Very far out. Past Isca. Past the edge of everything.

"Cold," said Ithel. In our language.

And in the kitchen downstairs, at the end of the long table, Ione put down her bread.

I heard her come up the stairs. Very fast. Faster than I'd ever heard her move. Ingrid behind her, saying her name.

She came into the map room past the Overseer and the dog and stood beside Ithel under the map. And looked up at the point he was holding his hand under.

For a long time.

"Long," she said. In our language. Very quietly. "Cold. Long." She put her hand at her throat. "A long cold place. Down. To the room."

She looked at Ithel.

"That one," said Ione.

Ithel looked at her.

"Yes," said Ithel.

The far yard.

Not a place, the Overseer said, once. A front. And it is. But at the front, there's a world. One. The one the keys come back to, in their boxes, and are carried down a long cold place to a room full of other boxes, all singing.

The one with the black building.

The same world.

Ingrid stood in the doorway with her hand over her mouth.

Isolde stood up from the long table.

They went to the children at the same time. And knelt down. One each. On the floor of the map room. Under the map.

And didn't say anything.

Ithel put his hand down. And leaned against Isolde.

Ione didn't lean. She doesn't, yet. But she put her hand in Ingrid's. Without being asked.

Okafor didn't write anything down until they'd gone.

Until Ingrid had taken them both down to the children's room, to the heap, and Isolde had gone with her, and the Overseer had moved back into the middle of the doorway, and the dog had gone back to its legs.

Then she picked up the chalk.

And on the slate on the wall, at the far edge, past Isca, where the slate ran out, she drew a very small circle. On the frame. On the wood. Because there wasn't any slate left.

And wrote beside it, on the wall itself, in chalk:

Cold.

"What's it called," said Okafor. To the Overseer. Without turning round. "In the ledger."

The Overseer was quiet for a long time.

It has no name, it said. Nothing the Sorn keep has a name. It has a number.

"What number?"

One, said the Overseer.

The second thing was when.

The ledger has a line for the stock, said the Overseer. In the doorway. With the dog. Under ours, and lost, and with. I have read it many times. I did not understand it until the boy.

"And now?" said Okafor.

Now I understand it, said the Overseer. It is a ledger. It counts. Everything the Sorn keep, it counts. How many. Where. How long.

Okafor put the chalk down.

"How long," she said.

The Overseer didn't answer at once.

There is a column, it said. Beside each kind of stock. Days. I thought it was how long they had been kept. Its pale eyes went to the small circle at the edge of the wall. It is how long it takes. In the building.

Nobody said anything.

"And the children," said Okafor.

The children have their own line, said the Overseer. At the bottom. Last. As the boy said. It was very still. Two hundred days.

Konrad was at the end of the long table. With the sheets.

He didn't need to look. He's never needed to look. But he looked anyway, because he says he's going to read everything now, for the rest of his life. He turned the first sheet over. To the front. To the bottom. To Halcro, and the numbers, and the one line that isn't Home.

Outward. 1,960.

And beside it, very small, in his neat hand, the day.

"A hundred and sixteen days ago," said Konrad. Very quietly. "They went outward a hundred and sixteen days ago."

Okafor wrote it on the wall. Under Cold. In chalk.

84.

That's what we had.

Eighty-four days. To go further than anyone had ever gone. To a world called One, at the front, where the Sorn and the Ashen and the new Sorn made out of everyone else were fighting the Hungry almost on even ground. To a black building bigger than a city. To find one thousand, nine hundred and sixty children in a line.

Without a key.

Without a door anyone could hold.

The third thing was how.

Everyone looked at me.

I knew they would. I'd known since the boy put his hand up under the silver point and said cold. I'd been sitting at the long table with my hands flat on the wood the whole time, feeling it. The distance. Further than Isca. Further than I'd ever been.

"The long way," I said.

"No," said Hana.

She was at the other end of the table. With the air going round her very slowly. She hadn't said anything all evening. She'd just been watching me. The way she's watched me since the red glass.

"No," said Hana. "Not alone. Not that far. Not after Hearth."

"I went to Isca," I said.

"Isca took you a day," said Hana. "And you came back together on a hill where a queen was singing to you. You had something to aim at." She didn't raise her voice. "This is further. And there's nothing singing at the other end. Nothing but a building, and the Sorn, and the Ashen, and the front." She looked at me. "You don't know if you'd come back together at all."

Nobody said anything.

Because she was right.

I've never told anyone what it's like at the far end of the long way, when there's nothing to aim at. I've only had to do it once. A long time ago. I don't remember it well. I remember it took a very long time to remember which pieces were mine.

"Then not alone," said Dinraal.

He was beside Isolde's empty chair. With the First Weapon at his feet. He'd been very quiet all evening, since Ithel came in and put his hand up. Very still. Looking at the small circle at the edge of the wall.

He stood up.

"You took the stations apart," he said. In our language. Slowly. "Nine. Every atom. And put them back." He looked at me. "Every cup someone left on a table. I have been to them since. Every cup."

"Stations aren't people," I said.

"No," said Dinraal. "But they were held together by silver. Silver that holds its own shape. That remembers what it is." He held up his wrists. His father's bracelets. "So am I."

I didn't say anything for a long time.

"I've never taken a person apart," I said. In the end. "Not anyone but me."

"I know," said Dinraal.

"I don't know if I can put you back."

"My silver will," said Dinraal. "If you can't. It remembers every shape I've ever been. It remembers me." He looked at the small circle on the wall. "And when we get there, you'll have something to aim at. Me. Coming back together beside you."

Isolde had come back up the stairs. She was standing in the doorway, beside the Overseer. With her hand on her middle.

She didn't say anything.

Dinraal turned round and looked at her.

They looked at each other for a long time. Across the map room. Without saying anything. The way Mother and Rhiannon look at each other at the stove.

Then Isolde said something. In Hearth's language. Very quietly.

Dinraal closed his eyes.

"What did she say?" said Okafor. Very gently. To Dot.

Dot didn't want to translate it. I could tell. Dot's rivers went very still.

Then she did.

"She says," said Dot. "Your father went to the edge of the sky before you were born. And never came back." A pause. "She says: don't you dare."

Dinraal opened his eyes.

"I won't," he said. In our language. To his wife. "I'll come back. I'll be there. I'll stand between seven beds."

Isolde looked at him for a long time.

"Eight," she said. "Ithel."

So that was how.

Not all of it. Okafor sat at the long table until dawn, working out the rest. Who else. What we'd take. What we'd do when we got there. How you find one thousand, nine hundred and sixty children in a line in front of a building bigger than a city on a world at the front of a war that's been going on longer than there have been houses.

But that was the start of it.

Me, and Dinraal. The long way. Scattered. To a world called One.

And then the arch. From the other side.

Jessa's waters broke the next morning.

At breakfast. In the kitchen of the house on the rise. At the long table. With Maura's bread in front of her and Inga on her lap and Sigmund beside her and his fence sparking very slightly round all three of them, the way it does when he's nervous.

She'd been carrying twins the ordinary way for a very long time. Since spring. Since before the triple wedding, nearly, since Inga turned round on her lap and put both hands flat on her middle and held on and said oh, there. She'd been very patient about it. She'd been very large about it, at the end. She'd sat out Isca and Hearth on the porch with her feet up and Halloway threatening to tie her to the bed.

She put her bread down.

"Siggy," she said.

Sigmund's fence went up all at once. All round the kitchen. Sparking.

And Maura put a damp cloth over the toast before it caught.

It took all day.

The ordinary way. The way Wren had Rafe on the long ward while she was counting, the way women had babies on Earth for as long as there were women. Halloway at the foot of the bed in the little room off the kitchen, saying good, good, that's it every few minutes.

Sigmund holding Jessa's hand. With his fence round the whole of the little room so tight it didn't spark at all.

And outside the door, on the floor of the kitchen, with their backs against the wall, all the grandparents.

Lotte Quint. Jessa's mother. Very small, very straight. With Marlo beside her, standing slightly sideways so the light could get round him.

Ingrid. Sigmund's mother. With her thin hands in her lap and the air very still round her.

Konrad. Sigmund's father. With his hat in his hands. Not on his stool. Not on the red glass. On the kitchen floor of the house on the rise, with his back against the wall, waiting. The way he says he wasn't there to wait for Sigmund, or for Risa, because he was in an office.

He was there for this.

Nobody said anything all day.

Then, at dusk, Konrad did.

"I missed them," he said. Very quietly. To Ingrid. Beside him on the floor. "Ours. Both of them. I was in the Senate when Sigmund came. I was at the Council when Risa did." He turned his hat over in his hands. "You were alone both times."

Ingrid didn't say anything for a long time.

"Not alone," she said. "Dorothy was there." She looked across the kitchen. At Mother, at the stove, who'd been at the stove all day, making tea for people who weren't drinking it. "Dorothy's always there."

Mother didn't turn round.

But she said, very quietly, to the kettle: "I am."

The first one came at dusk.

A girl. Small. With Jessa's straight brows and a shock of dark hair like Sigmund's and silver round her eyes already. Ordinary. Halloway says. Perfectly ordinary. Perfectly well.

And the second, nine minutes after.

A boy. Smaller. Very red. Very cross. With a spark going round his ear already, very small, very fast, the way his father's does.

Halloway put them on Jessa's chest. Both of them. At once.

And Sigmund's fence came down. All of it. All at once. For the first time in nine months, Jessa says. And he put his face in the pillow beside his wife's head and didn't say anything for a long time.

Then Inga came in.

Nobody let her. She just did. Down the passage from the children's room, where Dory had been keeping her all day. Through the kitchen. Past the grandparents on the floor. Into the little room. To the bed.

She climbed up. Without asking. Onto the end of it. And looked at the two babies on her mother's chest for a long time.

Then she put out both her hands.

Flat. Very gently. One on each of them.

The way she put them on her mother's middle, in the spring. And held on.

"Oh," said Inga. "There."

They came out of the little room an hour later.

Halloway first. With her bag. She took off her spectacles in the kitchen and rubbed her eyes and put them back on and said, to everyone and no one, "Ordinary. Both of them. Perfectly, beautifully ordinary." And sat down at the long table very suddenly. And Mother put a cup in front of her.

Then Sigmund. With his fence very small. Holding the girl.

And Jessa behind him, on her own two feet, because she wouldn't be carried, with Lotte's arm round her. Holding the boy.

Sigmund stopped in front of his parents.

On the kitchen floor. Where they were still sitting with their backs against the wall. Because neither of them had got up all day, and Konrad's knees wouldn't, and Ingrid wouldn't without him.

Sigmund knelt down.

And put the girl in his mother's arms.

Ingrid looked at her for a long time.

At the dark hair. At the straight brows. At the silver round her eyes.

"She's got a name," said Sigmund. Very quietly. "Jessa chose it. In the spring. We didn't tell anyone." He looked at his mother. "We wanted to see your face."

Ingrid didn't say anything.

"Ingrid," said Sigmund.

The air in the kitchen went very still.

All of it. All at once. The way it goes, just before. Maura's kettle stopped. The lamp stopped flickering. Pebble, asleep under the long table, lifted his head.

And then it went on again.

Very softly.

Ingrid held her namesake for a long time.

Then she said, in a voice I'd never heard her use. Not the Hush. Not the woman in the room. Something much younger.

"There was nobody called Ingrid," she said. "For thirty years. Not on any list. Not on any door. They took my name off everything." She looked down at the baby. "Konrad did."

Konrad, beside her on the floor, didn't say anything.

"And now there's two," said Ingrid.

Jessa knelt down on Konrad's other side. With the boy.

And put him in Konrad's arms.

Konrad held him the way he holds the sheets. Very carefully. As if he might get something wrong. The boy looked up at him, very cross, very red, with his spark going round his ear.

"Tomas," said Jessa. "For my father. Who had a twin brother. Who nobody remembers but Mum." She looked at Lotte. "Now there's someone to remember him."

Lotte Quint didn't say anything. She put her small hand on Jessa's shoulder. And left it there.

Konrad looked at his grandson for a long time.

Then he looked at me. Across the kitchen. Where I was standing in the doorway, with my hands in my pockets, the way I stand.

"Tomorrow," said Konrad. "You're going tomorrow."

"Yes."

"With Dinraal."

"Yes."

Konrad looked down at the boy in his arms. At the small spark going round his ear. At his sister, in Ingrid's arms. At Inga, at the end of the bench, with her hand on Jessa's knee, holding on.

"One thousand, nine hundred and sixty," said Konrad. Very quietly. "I wrote outward. I said I know the difference between a word that means a thing is over and a word that means it isn't." He didn't look up. "Every one of them was somebody's. Somebody sat on a floor for every one of them."

He looked up at me.

"Bring them home," said Konrad.

I went to the children's room that night.

The way I do. Very late. To sit on the floor.

They were all in the heap. Dory on the outside. Ione at the edge, with Dory's hand on her arm. Ithel in the middle, with the four, where they brought him the first night. Corin's closed fist on his shoulder. Frost from Elin's eyelashes on his hair. Goldie's warm hand under his cheek. Thessaly across his feet.

And by the door, two baskets now. Kesh's, and one that Maura had brought in from the kitchen, for the twins, because Jessa said they'd be in the heap soon enough and might as well start listening.

Kesh was awake.

Of course she was. Lying in her basket by the door. Looking at me. Very serious. With silver round her eyes. Counting me.

Her cloud was grey. Very small. Rumbling, a little.

I knelt down by the basket.

"I know," I said. "I'm going. I'll come back."

She frowned at me.

The way her mother frowns at the sky.

Risa was in the doorway.

I hadn't heard her come. She doesn't make a sound when she doesn't want to. She stood in the doorway in her nightclothes with her arms folded and her one grey cloud over her head, and looked at me kneeling by her daughter's basket.

"She knows," said Risa.

"I told her."

"She knew before you told her," said Risa. "She's been frowning at the map room door all evening." She came in. And knelt down beside me. By the basket. And looked at Kesh. "She doesn't like it when people go through doors she can't see the other side of."

"I wonder where she gets that," I said.

Risa didn't laugh.

She put her hand on my face. The way Andraste does, on the ridge, before she draws. Very briefly.

"I held the other end for two days," she said. "On the red glass. With my hands out. When you were under the lid." She didn't take her hand away. "I'll do it again. For as long as it takes. Every day. Until you come back through."

"I know."

"But I'd rather not," said Risa. "So come back fast."

Kesh's cloud flickered.

Very bright. Once.

And then, very slowly, it went white. And still. The size of a thumbnail.

Satisfied.

Okafor was still at the long table at dawn.

I went up to the map room before I went down to the red glass. She hadn't moved. She was sitting where she'd sat all night, with the chalk in her hand and the slate on the wall covered from edge to edge, and the wall round the slate covered too, and the small circle on the frame with Cold beside it and 84 under that.

She didn't look up.

"Sit down," she said.

I sat down.

"You go," said Okafor. "You and Dinraal. The long way. To One." She put the chalk down. "You don't fight. You don't go near the building. You don't go near the front. You find somewhere quiet, and you put your hand on the ground, and you find Avalon. The long way. The way you did on Isca."

"And then?"

"And then Risa holds the other end," said Okafor. "On the red glass. With Dory, and every queen, and Kyria's cutters on our side, cutting. The way she held it under the lid." She looked at me. "She's already down there. She's been down there since you went to bed."

I didn't say anything.

"And when the arch opens," said Okafor, "everyone comes through."

She turned round. And looked at the wall. At everything she'd written on it in the night. Names. Hundreds of names. In chalk, small, all the way round the slate and up to the ceiling.

"Everyone," said Okafor. "The Mom Squad. Hearth. The Hyrrani. The wing. Bree and Roan. Brock and Saska. All of it." She was quiet. "We don't know what's there. We know there's a building, and a line, and the children are at the end of it. And a front. And the Sorn, the new ones, that fight the Hungry almost evenly." She picked the chalk up again. "So everyone."

"And if I can't find Avalon from there?"

Okafor looked at me for a long time.

"Then Dinraal brings you back," she said. "His silver remembers him. He says it'll remember you too, if you're holding on." She put the chalk in her pocket. "So hold on."

I got up to go.

At the door I stopped. Because she still hadn't looked up. Because Okafor always looks up when someone leaves the map room; she says you should always see a person's face when they go, in case.

"Okafor," I said.

She didn't move.

"Abena," she said. Very quietly. To the wall. "Your Abena. She was nine days old. When the houses said the terms. In Hana's arms, at the end of this table. And I sat here, and I listened to them ask for you, and for four small ones who make doors, and I thought: they don't know what they're asking for. They think he's a weapon. They think the children are keys." She put her hand flat on the wood. "And now I know they knew exactly what they were asking for. They had a building for it."

She looked up then. At me. In the doorway.

"Every child on that wall," said Okafor, "was somebody's Abena. Nine days old. In somebody's arms."

I didn't say anything.

"Go on," said Okafor. "Let me see your face."

So I let her.

The red glass was cold at dawn.

Risa was standing at the arch on the interceptor field. In her flying leathers. With Kesh in the basket at her feet, and Vessa on Dory's chest, and Dory with her hands already on the frame. Every queen on Avalon was singing under the garden, very quietly, the way they sing before an arch. Kyria's cutters were in a long line along the edge of the field with their tools. Hesk was at the keystone with her hammer and a cup of tea she hadn't drunk.

Everyone was there.

Not to see us go. To be ready.

Dinraal came through the arch from New Hearth with Isolde and Ithel. And Tiamat, very straight, down off the Wall. And Rhiannon, with her basket, who gave both of us bread and stood there until we ate it.

Isolde didn't say anything. She'd said it all in the map room. She held Ithel's hand, and Ithel held the First Weapon's ear, and the First Weapon sat very straight at Dinraal's feet with his small crown on and looked at me as if he was deciding something.

Then Ithel let go of his mother's hand.

And walked across the red glass. To Dinraal. And put his small hand flat on Dinraal's silver. On the armour at his wrist. Where the bracelets are. His grandfather's.

And held it there.

"Warm," said Ithel.

Dinraal knelt down. And put his forehead against his son's.

And didn't say anything for a long time.

Then he stood up. And came and stood in front of me. On the red glass. In his armour. Very straight. The way his mother stands. Looking at the edge of things.

"Ready," he said.

I put my hands on his shoulders.

And asked.

Not the way I asked the stations. The stations were things. I asked them the way you'd ask a door to open. This was a man. With a wife, and a son, and a daughter coming the ordinary way, and his father's silver on his wrists. Standing in front of me on the red glass with his eyes open, waiting.

So I asked him the way you'd ask a man.

I'm going to take you apart. Every piece. And carry you a very long way. And put you back. I've never done it. I don't know if I can.

I know, said Dinraal. Not out loud. Through the silver. Through my hands on his shoulders. Ask anyway.

His silver held.

The way the stations held, at first. The way the oldest one held, that didn't want to let go at all. Every atom of it. Holding the shape it remembered. Holding him.

And then, very slowly, I felt it decide.

Not because I asked. Because he did.

It let go.

And he came apart in my hands. On the red glass. In the dawn. Very fine. Very bright. Every atom of him. Like the stations, a river of something like light, going up off the red glass into the air between my hands.

And I let go of myself.

And went with him.

The long way.

The last thing I heard on Avalon was Isolde.

Not crying. She doesn't. Saying something. In Hearth's language. Very quietly. To the place on the red glass where her husband had been standing.

Dot told me afterward what it was.

Eight beds.

Days 4689–4697. Two Hundred Days.

Mother put the slate face down on the long table: 1,960. Not on my slate. Okafor: let me work out how. Isolde: I won't ask him; pointing is a key. Ithel came on his own and held his hand up under one point, palm up, the way you show a flower: he wasn't pointing, he was telling. Cold. Ione: long, cold; that one. The far yard and the black building are the same world. The Overseer: it has no name, only a number. One. The children's line: two hundred days. They went outward a hundred and sixteen days ago. 84. Hana: not alone. Dinraal: my silver remembers me. Isolde: don't you dare. Eight, she said. Jessa's twins came the ordinary way: Ingrid, and Tomas. There was nobody called Ingrid for thirty years; now there's two. Konrad: bring them home. Kesh frowned at me; Risa: come back fast. Okafor: hold on. Ithel put his hand on Dinraal's silver: warm. Dinraal's silver decided to let go. The long way. Isolde: eight beds.