Chapter 438 Younger

The old woman from the sea-cliff world didn't know she was swaying.

That was the first thing. She came down off the arch on Nan Vey's arm on the ninetieth morning, very small, grey-skinned, with wide flat hands and a long woven coat, and stopped on the red glass and looked round at the interceptors and the house on the rise. And swayed. Side to side. A little. The way you do on a boat when the sea's been under you all your life.

She didn't see the third grey one at the edge of the glass behind Dory. She was looking at the sky.

He saw her.

He'd stopped swaying. For the first time since the twelfth spoke. He stood very still, very tall, very grey, with his face turned toward her.

Then he started again.

Not the way he had. Not small, not lost, not as if he didn't know what he was walking toward. Side to side. Slow. In time with her.

Dory didn't move. Mother didn't. Tavvan on his stool didn't breathe.

The old woman felt it.

Not saw. Felt. Dory says the sea people feel the rhythm of a deck under them through their feet, and the rhythm of anyone standing on it with them, and that the old woman stopped looking at the sky because the glass under her feet had started moving like a boat with two people on it instead of one.

She turned round.

She looked at him for a long time.

Then she walked across the red glass to him. Swaying. Him swaying with her. And stopped in front of him, and looked up, a long way up, at the grey face.

And put both her wide flat hands on his chest.

Dot didn't need to translate what she said. It wasn't a word. It was a sound. Low, and long, and rising at the end, like the sound you make across water to someone in another boat.

He made it back.

Hoarse. Very quiet. But he made it.

Halloway looked at me.

I put my hand on his back.

It was the easiest of all of them. Dory says that's because the sea people never stop. They sway in their sleep. They sway sitting down. He'd been swaying on the spoke on One and on the red glass for a year and a half, in the rhythm of a deck he'd been taken off when he was very small, and all that time his body had been keeping it for him.

All I did was help his heart notice that someone was swaying back.

He's her grandson.

Taken off a boat at five, Dory says, into a black ship, and into the hall on One, where Ferrin found him swaying in his row and gave him a word. Twenty years ago. He's twenty-five. He's tall, the way the making leaves them. Grey-skinned like her, with the wide flat hands. He doesn't remember the boat. He remembers the sound across the water. He says it was the only thing in the dark.

His grandmother's name is Ouse. She gave him his old name back on the red glass, the one his mother gave him, which Ouse had kept for twenty years the way Mother kept Ferrin's word. He keeps Ferrin's too.

All three of them do.

Mother went down to the red glass the next morning with the teapot, the way she has every morning for more than a year.

There was nobody there.

She stood at the edge of the interceptor field where the three of them used to stand, for a while, with the pot in her hands.

Then she poured the first cup out. On the glass. Slowly. All of it.

For Ferrin.

And came back up the hill.

She goes to see them now instead. The walker on the eastern plain, with his aunt. Wend in the rain valley with Aske, on the planks Holt laid. Ouse's grandson on the coast, where I made the sea people a harbour. She takes the train. She says the three words, one each, when she gets there. They say them back.

Tavvan goes with her. He says he never got to sweep for them. He says this is the next best thing.

That's the end of Ferrin's three.

I wanted to write it down properly. She walked out onto the twelfth spoke for them and didn't come back. She gave them the only thing she had. All three are home.

Merrit noticed first.

Not about the grey ones. About herself.

She's the eldest of Isca's Hill. A hundred and four when we brought the Hill home, and she'd lived all her life on the top terrace of Tor Isca and never once gone down. Now she lives on the top terrace of the Hill on Avalon, which I made for them the same as the old one, every stair in its place, because they asked.

She came to the long ward on the hundred and first morning of the fetching, on her own. Down every stair of the Hill. Every one, from the top terrace to the bottom.

Halloway was so surprised she put her chart down.

"She says," said Dot. "She'd like to know what's wrong with her."

Halloway looked at her. A hundred and five, now. Very straight. A little out of breath.

"What seems to be the matter?"

"She says she walked down the stairs," said Dot.

Halloway waited.

"She says she hasn't walked down the stairs since she was eighty," said Dot. "On Isca. She says her knees wouldn't. She says she's been going down one more every morning since the spring, to see, and this morning she got to the bottom." A pause. "She says she'd like to know why. Because she's a hundred and five, and she's fairly sure that isn't how a hundred and five is supposed to go."

Halloway looked at her for a long time.

Then she picked the chart back up. And turned to a page near the back. And held it out.

It was a list of names. Very long. In Halloway's small hand.

"You're not the first," said Halloway.

She'd been keeping it for years. Since before Earth emptied. Doctor Bell had been keeping one too, and Ruth before her. Little things. Nobody dying of the things people used to die of. Old people's hands going steadier. Children growing faster, though that was mostly mine. Halden's survivors sleeping through the night for the first time in thirty years.

Bell said it was the silver. Listening to the queens. Every queen on Avalon sings, all day, under everything, and the silver in everyone listens, and does what the queens' own silver does, which is grow toward being well.

But it had always been small. A little steadier. A little longer.

Since the fetching, Halloway said, it wasn't small any more.

"Since Root," said Dory.

She'd come in behind me. She was on her way to the red glass for the morning arrivals.

Halloway looked at her.

"The eldest," said Dory. "She's been singing a new song since I asked her about the middle. Toward it. Low. Like Gran's names on the porch." She looked at Merrit. "It goes through everything. Every queen sings it back, now. All day." She was quiet. "I think the silver in old people likes it best. It's the same shape as them."

Nobody said anything.

Merrit said something.

"She says," said Dot, "that's the most sensible thing anyone's said to her since she came off the Hill."

Then the old woman with the moss came down off her roof.

In New Hearth. The one Dinraal says has been on her roof since before he was born, in the old quarter, with nothing growing but moss because she likes moss. Who came up the hill once, the evening Rhiannon ate the pear, and put a jar of her soil in Dinraal's hands without a word, and went home.

She came down off the roof on the hundred and ninth morning and walked to the train.

On her own. The length of New Hearth. Across the long bridge over the sea that sings in the wind. Onto the train at the end of it. Nine hours east, to the forest city, where the old ones from the grey-moss world live in Kwame Osei's hollows at the end of a street, with their moss in the creases of their blankets.

Enna was driving. She told me. She said the old woman sat by the window the whole way and didn't say anything, and at the forest city she got off and walked straight to the end of the street as if she'd always known where it was.

The old woman from the grey-moss world was on her step. Watering the moss, out of a cup.

They looked at each other.

Then the old woman from Hearth sat down on the step beside her.

Neither of them speaks the other's language. Dot wasn't there. Enna doesn't know what they said.

But she's been on the forest city train every week since. Rhiannon says she hasn't been off her roof in four hundred years. She says it isn't the silver, or the singing, or whatever Halloway's writing down. She says it's that somebody finally grew the right kind of moss.

Halloway wrote it down anyway.

And Konrad's knees.

He noticed in the middle of the fetching. He went through the arch to Ingrid on the turf-roof world, very slowly, because he had to, and came back. And then the next week he went through to another one, because Ingrid was on it. And the week after that, three.

On the hundred and twentieth day, he walked up the hill from the red glass to the house on the rise without stopping on the bend.

He's stopped on the bend since we came to Avalon. Everyone knows. There's a stone there he sits on. Mother put a cushion on it.

He walked past the stone. Then he stopped at the top of the hill and looked back down at it for a long time.

"Ingrid," he said. "I didn't sit on the stone."

Ingrid was beside him. She'd seen.

"I know," she said.

"I always sit on the stone."

"I know," said Ingrid. And took his hand. And they went in.

Abbe's eyes aren't white round the edges any more.

Eska doesn't need the nine to hold her sleeve on the stairs. They do anyway.

Nan Vey ironed four hundred shirts on the red glass in one day for the old ones coming through the arch, and said at supper she could have done six hundred if she'd had more starch.

Mother says she doesn't feel any different. Mother says she's always felt like this. Halloway says that's because Mother's been on Avalon longest and listening to the queen at the garden wall longest, and she's been getting younger so slowly she never noticed.

Mother says that's nonsense and goes to get the teapot. She takes the stairs two at a time. Then she stops at the top and looks back down at them, very thoughtful.

Holt noticed too. He didn't say so. Crane did.

"You came back at noon," Crane said, on the hundred and thirtieth day. In his room at the red glass end of the line, at the board. "On the dot. Four days running."

"You put me on the board," said Holt.

"You were late the first fifty times," said Crane. "Your knee." He moved a small marker on the board, very carefully, back to where it lived. "You're not limping, sir. You haven't since the turf-roof world."

Holt looked at the stick he doesn't need. He'd stopped bringing it two weeks before and nobody had said anything.

"I'm sixty-one, Hal."

"Yes, sir," said Crane. "Halloway says you're going to be sixty-one for a while." He didn't turn round from the board. "So you'll be on my board for a long time."

Holt didn't say anything to that. But Mother says he walked up the hill that evening without stopping on the bend either, and sat down on the step outside the end room nearest the red glass, where an old man from the turf-roof world lives on his own, and the two of them watched the trains go out until it was dark.

Halloway took it to Okafor.

All of it. The list. Merrit on the stairs. Konrad's knees. The moss.

Okafor read it at the long table. Then she read it again.

"How much younger?" she said.

"I don't know," said Halloway. "Nobody does. It's not like going back. It's like—" She stopped. She doesn't stop. "It's like the silver's decided old doesn't have to mean the end of anything. Not yet. Not for a long time." She put the chart down. "Ask me in ten years. I'll have a better chart."

Okafor looked at the slate.

At IN. At GRANDMOTHERS FETCH GRANDMOTHERS.

"Fourteen million old people," she said. "And more every week. All of them getting younger." She was quiet. "The Sorn left them behind because they'd take too long to make into anything."

"Yes."

"Good," said Okafor. "They can take as long as they like here."

Dory builds with me now.

I should have written it sooner. It started on the coast. When Ouse came, with her grandson, and the rest of the sea people after her from the three hundred and fifth world, eleven thousand of them, every one old except him. They needed a harbour. With cliffs behind it and boats in it and decks that move.

I went to make the cliffs. Hana came. And Dory came, because she'd found them, and she wanted to see.

I put my hand on the ground and asked.

And felt her ask too.

Not beside me. With me. The way two people lift one end of something heavy together and you feel the weight go light all at once.

The cliffs came up out of the coast twice as fast as anything I've ever made.

I took my hand off the ground and looked at her.

She had her hand on the ground too. Flat. With her net very faint on her arm, and her eyes shut.

"Sorry," said Dory, opening them. "I should have asked."

"How long have you been able to do that?"

Dory thought about it.

"I don't know," she said. "I always could, a bit. I used to feel you doing it, from the heap, when you were making the town." She looked at the cliffs. "I just never tried, because you never needed me to."

So she does it now. With me. Most days.

Not everything. She's not me. She doesn't feel every atom on a world, not yet. But she feels where I'm asking, and asks with me, and the ground answers both of us faster than it answers me alone. Hana says my face looks better at the end of a day with Dory than it ever did at the end of a day without her. She says she hasn't seen a nosebleed coming once since Dory started.

The harbour took nine days. Alone it would have taken a month.

The end rooms on the far side of the forest city took four.

There are old ones who came home with nobody.

I should write that too. Not everyone who comes through the arch on a grandmother's arm finds a grandchild on the north field. Most of the young from their worlds went in, with the Sorn, and aren't anywhere Dory can find. Some of the old come home to nobody at all.

Abbe found them first. She noticed, on the platform at the bottom of the rain valley, that the old who had no one didn't pour the first cup any more. Not because they'd stopped grieving. Because there was nobody left to pour it for who'd ever come.

So Abbe started pouring theirs.

Every morning. On the planks. A cup for each one of them, for whoever they'd had. And then she gave them the second.

Mother heard. She went down on the train with the teapot. Then Eska heard. Then Ingrid. By the end of the month there were grandmothers on every end-room step in every one of the forty cities, in the mornings, pouring a first cup for an old person who'd come home to nobody, and handing them the second.

Dory and I made one more place, after that. Nobody asked us to. On the rise above the red glass, where you can see the arch.

A long low step. Very wide. Stone. Facing the arch. Nothing else.

It's where the old ones who came home to nobody sit in the mornings, to watch the arrivals come through. In case.

Mother sits with them. So does Holt, on his way out to the first arch, for a minute, with his stick. So does Konrad, now his knees don't stop him on the bend.

Kesh calls it the waiting step. Nobody's told her not to.

Ione calls it the watching step. She says nobody on it is waiting any more. She says she told them they could stop.

On the ninth evening at the harbour, the sea people went out on the water for the first time.

In boats Voss's sheds made them, with the old ones' hands guiding the young apprentices from the coast towns who'd never built a boat. Ouse in the first one. Her grandson at the oar.

Dory and I sat on the cliff above and watched them go out. Swaying. All of them. Side to side, the way they do, on the water at last.

"I like this better," said Dory.

I looked at her.

"Than Caddoc," she said. "I liked Caddoc. I said so. I still do." She pulled her knees up. "But I like this better." She was quiet. "Is that allowed?"

"Yes," I said.

"Good," said Dory.

The children are growing up.

I keep writing that Dory is twelve and a half. She's thirteen and a half now. She looks seventeen, Halloway says. Mother let her hems down for the last time in the spring and then gave up and Maura made her new everything.

But it isn't only Dory.

Trevor is as tall as Luna. He still wakes when Dory does. He's started sitting up with the General in the passage, some nights, very straight, with his hands behind his back, not saying anything. The General doesn't send him to bed. Luna says she's never seen her father so happy in her life.

Ash fixes things in Rory's workshop. Rory gave her her own drawer. It's next to Kesh's.

Small Sigmund isn't small. Nobody's told him to stop being called it. Big Sigmund says he'll stop calling him small when he can lift the forge anvil. He lifted it last week. Big Sigmund said he meant with one hand.

Efua shouts at birds with her great-grandmother every morning on Hettie's seed rows. They've got very good at it. The birds have moved to the far end of the field.

Kwame digs. Kwame Osei says he's never seen a child dig so straight.

Abena follows Hana everywhere. She's started breathing for the sick ones on the long ward, with Halloway's hand on her wrist, the way Hana does. She's very serious about it.

Elin and Goldie still act like twins, and the four still sleep in the middle of the heap. But Corin and Thessaly go to Hyrran every week now, with Kyria, to learn the blade, and come back with bruises they're very proud of. Corin looks more like Father every month, Mother says. She says it without being sad any more.

Vessa turns sideways for the Ashen, and the Ashen are gone, so she doesn't turn for anything now. Andraste says that worries her more than when she did.

And Kesh frowns at the sky. Kesh rains on everything. Kesh has started following Dory to the red glass in the mornings and standing beside her, very small, with her cloud over her head, checking everyone too. She doesn't know how. She does it anyway.

There you are, says Kesh. To everyone. Including the interceptors.

The heap's getting too small.

Not the room. The room's fine. The heap. There isn't enough rug any more for everyone's legs. Dory's feet have gone off the end of it entirely and so have Trevor's, and small Sigmund sleeps half on the floor and says he likes it.

Mother says that's what happens. She says one night you look at them and there's not enough rug, and that's how you know.

Nobody's suggested separate rooms. Nobody's going to.

I made the rug bigger.

Saska told Brock on the north field.

I know because everyone knows. She told him at the end of the morning drill, with the whole of the Standing finishing up round them, the Kasrai and the Kett and the Aun and Hearth's people and Earth's, and it went from one end of the field to the other in about the time it takes to say it.

Saska doesn't do things quietly. She hits people who are already there.

She walked up to him at the end of drill with her training wraps still on and her hair all over the place and said it straight to his face, in front of everyone.

Brock went iron.

Not on purpose. He does it when something hits him hard. To the shoulders, all at once, very loudly, the way it goes when he's taking a blow.

Then he went back. Slowly. And stood there in the middle of the north field, staring at her.

Saska stepped half a step to the left.

She always knows where everything's about to be. A heartbeat ahead. That's the half-step.

Brock fell over exactly where she'd been standing.

She'd known he was going to. She caught him anyway.

Teshka found out on the porch. Saska told her that night. Teshka's her grandmother; she's in the Mom Squad; she sat with Mother and Kyria and Ingrid on the porch steps and didn't say anything at all for a long time, which Kyria says is the most emotional anyone has ever seen her.

Then she said something in Vaeli. Very short.

"She says," said Dot. "It's going to be very difficult to hit."

Andraste put it better, at the long table.

"Iron," she said. "And the half-step." She put Holdfast down on the table very carefully. "A child who knows where every blow is going to be a heartbeat before it comes, and can turn to iron in time to take it." She looked at Saska. "On Hyrran we'd have made that child First Blade before it could talk."

"It's not going to be First Blade," said Saska. "It's going to be ours."

"Yes," said Andraste. "That's what my mother said about me."

Halloway saw Saska on the third morning. With Teshka in the corner of the long ward and Brock in the doorway, too big for it.

"It's building itself," said Halloway, with her hand on Saska's middle and her eyes shut. "The way Lucas's do. Not as fast. Your silver's finished and so is his." She opened her eyes. "It's already gone iron once. Very small. In the night. You'll have felt it."

"I thought it was me," said Saska.

"And it's doing something else," said Halloway. She frowned. Halloway doesn't frown. "It moves before I touch it. Every time. A heartbeat before my hand gets there."

Saska looked at her.

Then she laughed. She doesn't, much. It was very loud.

"It's already out of the way," said Saska. "Brock. It's already out of the way."

Brock, in the doorway, went iron to the elbows and back again and didn't seem to notice.

Brock hasn't stopped grinning.

He came up the hill on the second night and stood at the bottom of the porch steps with his hands in his pockets, very large, the way he stands, and asked me what it was like.

"Being a father?"

"Yeah."

I thought about it. About Dory on the rim of Caddoc, and in the corner of the children's room, and on the cliff above the harbour asking if it was allowed to like this better.

"Frightening," I said. "All the time. And the best thing there is."

Brock nodded slowly.

"That's what Saska said," he said. "She said you'd say that."

She would have known. She always knows.

Genny and Garnet came to Mother on the last night of the month.

I wasn't meant to hear. I was on the porch. They were in the kitchen. Everyone hears everything in that house.

They came in together. They do everything together. They sat down at the long table across from Mother, who was at the stove, and didn't say anything, and Mother didn't turn round.

"Mum," said Genny.

"Mm."

"We want to talk to you about something."

Mother put the lid on the pot. And turned round. And looked at both of them, my sisters, sitting side by side at the long table where they've sat since we came to Avalon, Genny with her notebook and Garnet with her board, the way they've been at that table at two in the morning a thousand times, working.

They weren't working.

Mother sat down.

"Callum asked me," said Genny. "Last week. If I wanted children."

"Rowan asked me," said Garnet. "The same night. They planned it. They said they didn't, but they did."

Mother didn't say anything.

"We said we'd think about it," said Genny. She looked at her notebook. She'd brought it. She brings it everywhere. "We've been thinking about it."

"For a week," said Garnet.

"Very hard," said Genny.

Mother's mouth did something. She didn't let it.

"And?" said Mother.

Genny and Garnet looked at each other.

"We want to," said Garnet.

"Both of us," said Genny. "Yes."

"But," said Garnet.

It was the queens.

The queens offered, years ago, to make them like me. Because they already had the framework, the queens said. And they did. Genny and Garnet fly. They feel the silver the way I do, almost. Genny listens to the queens the way nobody else on Avalon does, and Garnet sees through them and draws what's there.

And Halloway said, a long time ago, that their children would be like mine. Faster. Stronger. Building themselves.

"Dory was born and she was holding the hello," said Genny. "Before she'd taken a breath." She looked at her hands. "Kesh brought a cloud into the world with her. Corin and Thessaly built each other." She swallowed. "And then Dory stood on the rim of Caddoc, and—"

"We're not Lucas," said Garnet. "We're not his wives. We don't know how to do that. Any of it." She looked at Mother. "What if ours are like that and we don't know how to—"

She stopped.

"How to what, love?" said Mother.

"How to be enough," said Garnet.

Mother didn't say anything for a long time.

Then she reached across the long table. And took one of Genny's hands. And one of Garnet's. The way she's held my hand across that table more times than I can count.

"When your brother was born," said Mother, "his father and I were two orphans who'd never had a mother or a father between us, in a dome where nobody ever had enough of anything." She held on. "We didn't know how to do any of it. Not one thing. We didn't know what he'd be. Nobody does."

"But he was—" said Genny.

"He was a baby," said Mother. "They all are. Dory was a baby. She held the hello and then she screamed for three hours because Risa's milk hadn't come in." She looked at them both. "You don't have to know how to be enough for what they're going to be. Nobody's ever known that. You only have to be there in the morning."

"And you'll be there," said Garnet. Very quietly.

"I'll be there," said Mother. "Ingrid will be there. Maura. Nan Vey, she'll iron everything they own. Kyria will teach them the blade before they can walk. Abena will feed them." She let go of their hands. "Every grandmother in this house. And every one of the fourteen million who came home old, who've all decided they're everyone's grandmother now, God help us."

Genny laughed. It came out wet.

"And you'll have the heap," said Mother. "Your brother's just made the rug bigger."

They sat there a while longer. Mother poured tea. Nobody poured anything out.

Then Garnet said, "Mum. When did you know? That you wanted us?"

Mother thought about it.

"Before I knew I was going to have you," she said. "I was standing at the forge door, with your brother very small on my hip, and I thought: I'd like to see what else there is." She smiled. "And then there were two of you."

Callum and Rowan were on the porch steps when Genny and Garnet came out of the kitchen.

They'd been there the whole time. In their flight jackets, side by side, the way they sit in the interceptor, Rowan first and Callum calling the turns. Pretending they weren't waiting. Nan Vey's grandsons. Nineteen when Callum was burned on the Halcro moon-yard; older now, and steadier, and still very bad at pretending.

Genny sat down next to Callum without a word and put her notebook in his lap.

Garnet stood in front of Rowan with her board under her arm.

"Yes," said Garnet.

Rowan looked up at her.

"Mum says you only have to be there in the morning," said Garnet. "So you'd better be."

"I'm always there in the morning," said Rowan. "I fly the first patrol."

"Then fly a later one," said Garnet.

Callum laughed. Genny elbowed him. He stopped. He was holding the notebook very carefully in both hands, as if it were already something else.

Nan Vey came up the hill in the morning with an iron and a basket of very small shirts. Nobody had told her. Nobody ever has to tell Nan Vey anything.

"You'll do," she said. To all four of them. And went to put the kettle on.

I went in after they'd gone up to bed.

Mother was at the sink. She didn't turn round.

"You heard," she said.

"Everyone hears everything."

"Mm," said Mother. She rinsed the cups. All of them. And put them on the rack. And then she stood at the sink with her hands in the water and didn't move.

"Grandchildren," said Mother. Very quietly. "Mine. Again."

"They're all yours," I said. "Abena said so."

"I know," said Mother. "That's not what I mean."

She took her hands out of the water. And dried them. And looked out of the window over the sink, at the dark, where the garden wall is and the queen and the scarecrow with Father's coat on it.

"Your father would have been so pleased," said Mother.

Days 5475–5571. Younger.

The old woman from the sea-cliff world swayed, and the third one swayed with her: Ouse, and her grandson, taken off a boat at five. Ferrin's three are home. Mother poured the first cup for Ferrin and goes to visit them now. Merrit walked down every stair of the Hill at a hundred and five and asked what was wrong with her. Halloway's list. Dory: it's the eldest's new song; the silver in old people likes it best. The old woman with the moss came off her roof and took the train to the forest city. Konrad walked past the stone on the bend. Okafor: they can take as long as they like here. Dory builds with me now; the harbour in nine days; I like this better, is that allowed. The heap needs a bigger rug. The old who came home to nobody: Abbe pours their first cup; the watching step. Saska told Brock on the north field; he went iron and fell over where she'd been. Teshka: very difficult to hit. Genny and Garnet: how to be enough. Mother: you only have to be there in the morning. Your father would have been so pleased.