Chapter 451 Gathering

Genny told Mother on a wet morning, which Mother says is the right sort of morning for it.

I wasn't meant to be there. I was in the kitchen doorway with a cup, on my way out to the south plain to build, and Genny came in from the courtyard with her notebook under her arm and her hair wet from Kesh's warm rain, and stopped in front of the stove.

Mother didn't turn round.

"Mum," said Genny.

"Mm."

Genny didn't say anything else.

Mother put the lid on the pot. And turned round. And looked at her for a long time. At her face, and then lower, at the notebook under her arm, held very carefully, in front of her middle, the way you'd hold something to keep it warm.

"Oh, love," said Mother.

That was all, for a while. Mother crossed the kitchen and put her arms round my sister and held on, and Genny put her face in Mother's shoulder the way she did when she was small and had broken something, and the notebook got squashed between them.

I went out. Quietly. It wasn't mine.

I heard the rest afterward. Everyone did. Everyone hears everything.

Halloway had seen her the week before, in the long ward, in the ring, very early, before anyone was up. Ten weeks. Building itself, Halloway said. Not as fast as mine did, when they were in my wives. But faster than anyone else's on Avalon. The way Halloway said it would be, years ago, when the queens finished my sisters the way they finished me.

"She told me not to tell you till she had," said Halloway. To Mother. At the long table, at noon, with everyone there. "So I didn't."

"Quite right," said Mother.

Callum found out second.

He was at the interceptor field with Rowan, the way they always are in the mornings, flying the first patrol. He came down at noon and walked up the hill in his flight jacket and found Genny on Mother's step with Mother's arm round her and a cup in her hands, and stopped at the bottom of the porch steps.

He looked at her.

Genny looked back.

Callum sat down on the bottom step. Very suddenly. The way people sit down in this house when their legs decide.

Rowan, behind him, put a hand on his shoulder and said, "Breathe, Cal," which is what Callum says to Rowan in the second seat when the turns get bad.

Callum breathed.

Then he got up and went up the steps and knelt down in front of my sister on Mother's step and put his head in her lap, flight jacket and all.

Genny put her hand on his hair.

"You'll have to fly a later patrol," she said.

Callum laughed into her lap. It was mostly not laughing.

Nan Vey came up the hill that evening with an iron and a basket.

Nobody had told her. Nobody ever has to.

She put the basket on the long table. Small shirts. Very small. A dozen of them, white, ironed flat, every one with a crease down the sleeves you could cut paper on.

"You'll do," said Nan Vey. To Genny. To Callum. To both of them. And went to put the kettle on.

Garnet didn't say anything all day.

She came into the kitchen at midnight, when everyone else had gone up, and found me there with the last of the tea, and sat down across the long table from me with her drawing board.

"She told me first," said Garnet. "Before Mum. Before Callum. Last week. In the hollow."

"I know."

Garnet looked at me.

"I saw her," I said. "With her hand on her middle. On the ledge. When she was writing down the gifts."

Garnet nodded. Very slowly. She does everything with Genny; they've done everything together since before they could walk. They were finished by the queens together. They married on the same morning, on the north field, at dawn.

"I'm not," said Garnet. Very quietly. "Not yet. We're trying." She looked at her board. "I'm so happy for her I can't draw."

She drew anyway. All night. In the morning there was a new drawing on the kitchen wall, beside the four hands over the porch step and the two coats at the garden wall. Two women from behind, sitting on a ledge in the dark, very close, one with a notebook and one with a board. And a very small light between them.

That was the start of the winter.

I want to write the winter, because it was quiet, and the quiet ones never get written, and Mother says they're the ones you remember when you're old.

Lio learned to ask the ground.

Not much. Dory took her out to the south plain with us one morning, where we were building the eleventh city, and sat her on the edge of the bare ground with her hand flat, and said: ask it what it would like.

Lio asked.

The ground under her hand came up. A little. A step. Very small, very rough, the height of a teapot.

She looked at it for a long time.

"It wanted to be a step," she said.

"Yes," said Dory.

"For somebody to sit on."

"Yes."

Lio sat on it.

The Aldri at the edge of the ground with their little silver boxes didn't say anything. But the oldest of them came and knelt down beside the step afterward and put her long hand on it for a long time. And then went back to the others, and they all wrote for an hour.

That step's at the end of a street in the eleventh city now. At the corner. Small and rough. Nobody's allowed to move it. An old Ennet woman from Sedge sits on it in the mornings and pours out the first cup.

The table lessons went on. Every afternoon, at the long table, with Father's notebooks open at the page.

Bell taught us the breaking and the joining. Earth's way. Fission, fusion. The things she asked me about once on the porch, a long time ago, when I didn't know what she meant. The children listened with their mouths open. Corin made her stop and do the bit about the sun three times. Small Sigmund asked if you could break a whole mountain in half that way and Bell said yes and Risa said don't.

Dory didn't ask anything about the breaking. She sat at the end of the table behind Dusk and listened to all of it and wrote very little down.

At the end of the lesson on fusion she said, very quietly: "That's what Dad did. On that world. The second ship."

Bell looked at her for a long time.

"Yes," said Bell. "It is."

Dory didn't say anything else. She closed her notebook. And went out to the courtyard and sat with Lio and Kesh and Oona in the warm rain for an hour.

Trevor walked Teva to the arch every evening.

Small Sigmund walked Tovi. Both of them pretending the other wasn't there. Mother says it's the most entertaining thing that's happened on the hill since the wind tower.

Corin did his forms. Tiri hummed.

Ithel, very seriously, began teaching Bahamut his letters. On the floor of the map room, under the two thousand, eight hundred and six silver points. Using the points as the letters. Isolde says Bahamut can spell home now, in silver, very badly, on the ceiling.

Konrad and Ingrid went out on the boats at the park every week. Konrad's knees don't stop him on the bend any more. He stops anyway.

Wren said the number at the dawn count on the shortest day of the year.

"One billion, three hundred and forty million," said Wren. "Give or take."

A pause.

"And one more on the way," said Wren. "Genny's."

Konrad wrote it. Not on the back. Not on the front. In the margin, beside Avalon. Very small.

+1.

That was the winter.

The spring was different.

Tiamat saw it first.

Not Ilka. Not the Aldri. Tiamat, whose ears are pushed into the rock of every moon and stone in Root's sky, at the edge of the Watch, because she said if anything ever came for the eldest she wanted to hear it a thousand years before it arrived.

She called on the first warm morning of the spring. Through the silver. From New Hearth. Very level.

"Okafor," said Tiamat. "The body."

"It's moving," said Tiamat.

At the long table, an hour later, with everyone there. Standing at the end of it, very straight, with her hand on the wood.

"It's always moving," said Okafor.

"Not like this." Tiamat put the wall up. Through the silver. Over the long table, so everyone could see.

The dark past the edge of the Watch. And in it, brown and black, everywhere, the body of the Hungry. Not one arm. Not a piece. All of it. Every arm we'd ever seen, the one past Hearth, the one that came for Ister, the one over Caddoc, all of them pulling in. Toward each other. Into one.

"It's gathering," said Tiamat.

Nobody said anything for a while.

"Since the world," said Dory. Very quietly. Behind Dusk. "Since we broke the world where they're born."

Tiamat looked at her.

"Yes," she said. "It started three days after. Slowly. It's been getting faster."

"Where's it going?" said Okafor.

Tiamat didn't answer straight away.

She moved the wall. Very slowly. Out from the dark where the body was gathering. Past the Watch. Toward the edge of everything we know, where one point of light sits on its own in Tiamat's map, very bright, with nine smaller ones round it, and Tiamat's own ears in the rock of every one.

Root.

"It's always been looking for her," said Tiamat. "It's been looking for her for longer than there have been days. That's what the eldest said." She looked at the point of light. "It never knew where. She sang false roads for it. For millions of years."

"And now?"

"Now it's stopped following the roads," said Tiamat. "It's coming straight."

The eldest said it herself, that night.

Through the silver. Through every queen on Avalon. Through the ground under the house on the rise, through the hollow, through the Scarecrow queen at the garden wall, into all of us on the porch at once.

It knows, said the eldest.

How? said Dory.

Because I sang toward the middle, said the eldest. Very slowly. For you, child. So that the hand would look at me instead of you. A pause. I sang louder than I have ever sung. And the hand looked.

And the Hungry heard.

Dory took Dusk off.

On the porch. In the dark. And looked at nothing, with her black eyes, the way she looks when she's seeing all the way down into something very far away.

She didn't say anything for a long time.

"It's my fault," she said.

No, said the eldest.

"You sang toward it for me—"

I chose to, said the eldest. I am very old, child, and I have chosen everything I have ever done. I chose that. A long pause. And I would choose it again.

Then Halvane came up the hill.

At midnight. Very fast, for an Aldri. In his robe. With his little silver box in his hand and his shimmer gone almost dark.

"The middle," said Halvane. "It's open."

Not the hand. The hand's still there; Dory checked, very carefully, from the edge, without knocking. But in front of the hand, all along the edge of the middle, where the Sorn ships went in two years ago and nothing's come out since but Lio's.

Grey ships.

Coming out. Hundreds. Then more. Halvane's ears on Ister had been counting them for an hour before he came, and they hadn't stopped.

"Full," said Halvane. "Of the new ones. Grey. Finished, this time. All the way." He looked at me. "They've had two years."

"Where are they going?"

Halvane looked at Tiamat's wall. Still up over the long table, where she'd left it.

At the body of the Hungry, gathering. At Root.

At the line between them.

"Behind it," said Halvane. Very quietly. "They're following the body. At a distance." He put the box away. "Whatever the Hungry do to Root, the Sorn want to be there when it's finished. To take what's left."

"The engine," said Okafor. At once. "Root's engine. The one you put in, Halvane. Just in case."

"Yes."

"Then she goes," said Okafor. "Tonight. Now. Before it gets there."

The eldest said no.

Through the ground. Into all of us. Very slowly. Very old.

No, said the eldest. Not yet.

"It's coming for you," said Okafor. To the air. To the ground. "The whole of it. And the Sorn behind it."

I know, said the eldest.

If I go somewhere safe, she said, it does not stop. It does not go home. It has no home now; you broke it. It goes to the nearest thing that sings.

A pause.

That is Avalon.

Nobody said anything.

I have run for longer than there have been days, said the eldest. I will not run so that it comes to my children instead. The ground under the porch trembled, very slightly. Better it comes to me. And you come to me. And we end it there.

Okafor didn't say anything for a long time.

Then she said: "It already knows where we are."

The ground went very still.

"It came into our sky," said Okafor. "Two years ago. An arm, looking for Ister. Three stations broke it, and thirteen of ours didn't come home, but it came. It found us." She put her hand flat on the long table. "It's been on Caddoc. Tiel. Every Hedge world it's ever touched has an arch to the red glass on it. It's been tasting us for years."

Yes, said the eldest. Very slowly.

"So if you stay out there," said Okafor, "at the edge of everything, and we all come to you, every ship and every station and every queen who can be carried, then Avalon's here. Empty. With a billion people on it and the grandmothers and the children and nobody in its sky." She looked at the wall. At the body, gathering. "And when it's finished with you, or while it's busy with you, it'll send an arm here. Or the Sorn will. Following behind to take what's left."

Nobody said anything.

"We can't stand in two places," said Okafor. "Not against the whole of it."

Mother put the teapot down.

"Then come here," said Mother.

The ground under the porch didn't move.

"You've got the engine," said Mother. To the ground. To the eldest, very far away. "Halvane put it in. Just in case. This is the case." She poured a cup. Into nobody's cup. Just poured. "Come here. Next to us. Next to Ister. All three of us together, where everyone can reach. And then when it comes, it comes to all of us at once, and every one of us is standing in front of every one of us."

She put the pot down.

"That's what families do," said Mother. "They don't send the old one out to the edge to stand on her own. They bring her in. They put her by the stove."

The eldest didn't say anything for a very long time.

Then the ground under the porch, under the house, under the hollow and the garden and all of Avalon, did something I've never felt it do.

It laughed.

Very low. Very old. Very slow. Like a mountain settling.

By the stove, said the eldest.

"Yes," said Mother.

I have never been by anyone's stove, said the eldest. In all the time there has been.

"Then it's about time," said Mother.

Dory held the line.

The way she held it for Ister. On the red glass, at night, with Halloway at her wrist and me beside her and Halvane's engineers at the engine under Root's deepest ground, very far away, with Genny beside them to ask the eldest every moment if it hurt.

Only it wasn't one world this time. It was Root, and its moons, and every world round it that the eldest's silver runs through, all linked, all at once. The engines Halvane's people put in, just in case. All of them answering at the same moment.

Dory's nose bled. Her hands shook. Halloway counted out loud.

And then there was a new light in the sky.

In the east. Low. Just short of Ister's lamp, between us and it. Very big; bigger than Ister, bigger than any star, with nine smaller lights round it, and threads between them, very faint, silver, that you could see if you knew how to look.

Root.

Halvane and Tiamat chose the place. They'd spent the nine days arguing over it in the heart of the ninth station, one word at a time. Not out on the edge of our sun's path, where the body would reach it first. Not beside Avalon, or beside Ister, where it would have one world at its back and nothing on the other side.

Between. In the same path round our sun as both of us, with Avalon on one side and Ister on the other. The only place in the whole of our sky where anything coming at the eldest has to come past one of us first, from any direction it tries.

"The middle of the family," said Tiamat. When she showed Mother on the wall.

"By the stove," said Mother.

The whole of Avalon looked up. Again. The way it did the night Ister came.

Avalon. Root. Ister. In a line, round the sun. The eldest in the middle, with a world on either side of her.

And under every city, every queen on Avalon sang at once, so loud the ground shook in the forest city and the walkers on the eastern plain stopped walking to listen.

The eldest sang back.

Close, now. Not from the edge of everything. From the east, low, every dawn, just before Ister's lamp. So close that Dory says, if you put your hand flat on the ground at dawn, you can feel her. Like a very big, very old heart, next door.

Mother was on her step. She'd heard all of it. She hadn't said anything.

She put the teapot down.

"How long?" said Mother.

Tiamat looked at the wall.

"Thirty days," she said. "Perhaps forty. It's very big. It's slow when it's all together."

Mother nodded. As if that was a perfectly ordinary length of time to have.

"Then we've got thirty days," said Mother. "Maris. You'd better start."

Okafor stood very still at the head of the long table for a long time.

Then she went to the slate.

She didn't rub anything out. She never does now. IN. Don't. More. Ready. Love. They have one. She has a grandmother. So do we. All of it, one under another, in four hands.

She wrote three words. At the bottom. In capitals. One under another.

ROOT.

ISTER.

AVALON.

Then, under them, smaller, she drew a line. Round all three.

Genny was on the step below Mother's. With Callum. With her hand on her middle, which is very round now; Halloway says weeks, not months.

She didn't say anything. She looked at the slate through the kitchen window for a long time.

Then she looked at Mother.

Mother put her hand on Genny's hair.

"You're not going," said Mother.

"I know," said Genny.

"Neither is Callum."

Callum opened his mouth.

"Neither is Callum," said Mother again. Very firmly. "Somebody's got to fly a later patrol."

The thirty days started the next morning.

I'll put down what Okafor planned. Not all of it. The map room wall's covered three deep in chalk and silver and light, and Keir says even he can't read all of it now. But the shape of it.

Everyone.

That's the shape. Okafor said it at the long table at dawn, with the General and Holt and Varra and Kyria and Andraste and Tiamat and Halvane and Aurelius standing round it, and the grandmothers at the far end with the teapot.

"Everyone who can," said Okafor. "From every world in the Hedge. Here. To the three of us."

The Aldri stations. All eighteen, and nine more the Aldri built over the winter. Nine round Root now, nine round Ister, nine round Avalon. Halvane said the three worlds were close enough now that any station could reach any of them in an hour. Aune at the front of the fighters, four thousand of them now. Tiamat's nine stations from Avalon's sky, with Hearth's people in every one.

The Meridian, with Ruan on her bridge and the spine-queen laid along her middle and Ilka in her room with the map. Every ship we have. The Ground, with the heavy queen. The Harness. The Long Legs.

The Standing. All of it. Nine hundred thousand now. In the suits. With the wall, and the weapons that kill almost anything, and the tanks a hand's width off the grass. Varra in front.

The Hyrrani. Every one who can hold iron. And the walking engines from every ridge on Hyrran, struck three short and one long.

Every queen who can be carried. Okafor said that one very carefully. She said the eldest's asked for us and the queens are her children and every one of them who wanted to come could come and every one who didn't wouldn't be asked twice.

Every one of them said yes.

And the grandmothers.

Mother said it. At the far end of the long table. Not standing. Pouring.

"At every arch," said Mother. "Every one. On every world in the Hedge, and every one cut between the three. A smith and a grandmother. Same as always."

The General looked at her.

"Dot," said the General. "This isn't fetching."

"No," said Mother. "It isn't." She put the pot down. "That's why."

I asked her not to go. Later. On the porch. Not to the front. Not anywhere the body would come first.

Mother looked at me for a long time.

"I held up the top terrace of a world," said Mother. "I held up Fell. I held a corridor in a broken ship past Root with forty of them hanging in the air. I held your daughter a finger's width off a moon through a window." She poured. "I'm not young, love. I'm younger than I was. And I lift."

"Mother."

"She asked for everyone who can," said Mother. "I can."

She held out the cup.

I took it.

Lio asked to go.

She came to Dory in the courtyard on the second morning, after the knot, with her pebble in her hand. Very small. Very solemn. With her hair tied up at the side in Kyria's grey wool.

"I broke a world," said Lio. "For them. The houses. The world where the Hungry are born."

"I know," said Dory.

"I could break the body," said Lio. "If I told it. All of it."

Dory didn't say anything for a long time.

She knelt down in the courtyard. On the wet stones. So they were the same height.

"Lio," said Dory. "When you told the world to let go, what happened to you?"

Lio looked at her pebble.

"My nose," she said. "And my ears."

"And?"

Lio didn't answer.

"It nearly killed you," said Dory. Very gently. "One world. And you were only telling it to let go. You weren't even holding anything." She put her hand on Lio's hair. "The body's bigger than a world. Much bigger. If you told it all to let go, it'd take you with it. Every atom."

Lio didn't say anything.

"I'm not telling you no," said Dory. "I'm asking you something. Like I always do." She looked at her. "Would you stay here? With Gran Sefa. And Oona and Kesh. And make the warm rain in the mornings, so everyone who comes home from Root has somewhere warm to stand?"

Lio looked at her for a long time.

Then she looked over the garden wall, at Sefa on her top terrace, twisting her hair.

"Yes," said Lio.

Sefa came down off her terraces that evening, very slowly, and found Dory on the porch, and put a hand on Dory's face. Both sides. The way the old Caddi woman did on the salt.

She didn't say anything.

She didn't have to.

Tiri didn't ask Corin anything. She didn't need to; Aune was going to be at the front of four thousand fighters, and Corin was seven and not going anywhere, and everyone knew.

She sat on the courtyard step every morning of the thirty days and watched him do his forms. With her bird on her shoulder. Shimmering very dim.

On the ninth morning, Corin finished his forms and put his practice sword down and came and sat on the step beside her.

"I'll hum," said Corin. "While she's up there. Like last time. Every hour."

Tiri looked at him.

"It'll be a long time," she said. "Halvane says. Days."

"Then I'll hum for days," said Corin.

Tiri's shimmer came up. Not bright. Just up.

She put her hand on the step between them.

Corin put his on it.

Neither of them looked.

Konrad asked Ingrid not to go.

He's never asked her not to do anything. Not in the war. Not when she came out of the ward and went straight into the air on the first night. He asked her on the boat at the park, on the eighth evening of the thirty, at the fall at the bottom of the swings, with her head on his shoulder.

Ingrid didn't lift her head.

"Konrad," she said.

"I know," said Konrad. "I know what you'll say."

"Then why ask?"

Konrad looked at the water for a long time.

"Because I never did," he said. "At the ford. When the handlers came up out of the river. I stood behind you with a slate and I never once asked you not to go out in front." He turned the silver-grey ribbon on her wrist round with one finger. "I wanted to have asked. Once. That's all. So you'd know I wanted to."

Ingrid didn't say anything for a long time.

Then she said: "I'll come back."

"I know you will," said Konrad. "You always do." He was quiet. "I'll be on the step. With the sheet. Counting."

The ones on the north field were the hardest part. For me.

The fourteen hundred. The unfinished ones the houses let go of, in the broken ships past Root, who've stood at the edge of the north field for two years now in their tents and Kwame's hollows, swaying, with nobody in them but themselves.

Not fourteen hundred any more. Over the winter, the fetching brought home old ones from worlds we hadn't reached before. And some of them, coming off the arch on the red glass, stopped. And looked at the north field. And walked across it to someone swaying at the edge, and did the thing their people do.

Three hundred and four, over the winter. Called home. Konrad's sheet. One line each.

Eleven hundred still swaying.

They'd hear the Standing drilling for Root. They'd hear the walking engines coming through the arches from Hyrran, very heavy, and the Aldri stations going overhead in the night, and the grandmothers on the porch every evening making lists. They'd stand at the edge of the north field and sway and watch.

On the twelfth day, one of them walked across the field to the Standing's line.

Not swaying. Walking. In a line. Toward Varra, at the front, with her rope tied round her waist.

Varra watched it come.

It stopped in front of her. Very tall. Very grey. Nobody in it but itself.

And it put its hand flat on its own chest. And then held it out. Palm up.

The way the Aun taught everyone on Avalon, years ago, without meaning to. You're in it.

Varra looked at it for a long time.

Then she did the same.

Nine more came across the field that afternoon. Then forty. By the end of the thirty days, three hundred of the eleven hundred were standing in the Standing's line in borrowed suits. Not called. Not anyone's. Nobody knows their names.

Varra says it doesn't matter. Varra says a wall doesn't ask who's standing on it.

Holt asked Okafor on the fifteenth day if he could go first.

He didn't need to ask. He always goes first. But he asked, at the long table, in his good coat, with his cap in his hands. Very formally.

Okafor looked at him for a long time.

"It's the body, Ezra," she said. "All of it. Not a world. Not a ship."

"I know."

"You're sixty-seven."

"Halloway says I'm going to be sixty-seven for a while," said Holt. "And I'm not going first to fight it. I can't fight it. I've never been able to fight anything." He turned his cap round in his hands. "I'm going first so that when it comes over the edge of our sky, the first thing everyone going out behind me sees is somebody old standing there with his cap off. Not afraid."

Okafor didn't say anything.

"They'll be afraid," said Holt. "Everyone will be. It's the body. They'll go out and see it filling the sky and they'll be afraid." He put the cap on. "And then they'll see me. And think, well. If the old man's there."

Okafor looked at him for a very long time.

"First in," said Okafor.

"Last out," said Holt.

Crane put a new board up in his room at the end of the line that night. Very big. The biggest he's ever made. With a marker for every ship and every station and every company of the Standing and every walking engine and every queen.

And one, very small, at the front of all of them, in his very small writing.

Holt.

The eldest asked for Dory on the twentieth day.

Not to fight. To stand with her.

The net, said the eldest. Through the ground. To Dory, on the porch, at dusk. When it comes, everyone will be everywhere. Ships, stations, walls, queens. Thousands of places. Millions. A pause. Someone has to hold them all together. So each one knows where the others are. So nobody is alone in it.

Dory didn't say anything.

I have held my children together since before there were days, said the eldest. I will be busy. I will be singing. The ground trembled. I would like you to stand beside me, child, and hold the rest.

Dory looked at me.

I looked at Risa. Risa was at the rail with her arms folded.

"I'm at your back," said Risa. "That's the rule. Wherever you are." She unfolded her arms. "Even beside the oldest thing that ever lived."

Dory took Dusk off. And looked at nothing, with her black eyes, toward Root, low in the east now, very bright, between us and Ister.

"Yes," she said. To the eldest.

Thank you, said the eldest.

Then, very quietly:

Bring your grandmother's teapot.

My wives and I went up to the roof on the last night of the first week.

All six of us. Where Risa sits with her arms folded and her storm. Under the stars, with Root's light, new and very big, low in the east, and the lamp of Ister just beyond it.

Nobody said much.

Luna held my hand with her cold fingers. Sera was very warm. Risa had her storm folded up very small round her shoulders like a shawl. Hana breathed for me without my noticing until I noticed. Andraste lay on her back on the tiles with Holdfast across her chest and the white ribbon on her wrist, looking at the sky.

"Thirty days," said Andraste. In the end.

"Twenty-three now," said Luna.

"Twenty-three days," said Andraste. "And then the thing that's been eating worlds since before there were days comes to the first queen who ever lived, and to us, and to Ister, all at once, and we stand in front of all of it." She was quiet. "My mother would have given anything for a fight like that. Her mother. Every First Blade since the first."

"Do you want it?" said Hana.

Andraste thought about it for a long time.

"No," she said. "I want to come home. And sleep on this roof with you." She turned her head. "But if it's coming, I'd rather it came to us than to anyone else."

Nobody said anything to that.

Risa unfolded her storm, very slightly, so it went over all six of us. Not rain. Just cloud. Warm. Like a blanket.

We stayed up there till it was light.

On the last night of the thirty, Mother said the names.

On her step. With everyone. Every one of the house who wasn't already at a station or an arch, getting ready: Oona beside her in her coat, Lio and Kesh in the doorway with the warm pebble, Sefa on the bench, Ilas and Abbe. Genny on the step below with Callum, very round, with Garnet's hand on her shoulder. Konrad with the sheet. Ingrid in her flight jacket, which she hasn't worn in a year.

Mother said them all. Father's first. Then everyone's. All the ones she's ever said. Ferrin's. The nine Marrah. Oona's three. Lio's mother and father, still in. Tiel's six hundred and forty. The thirteen markers still out on Crane's board.

Then she stopped.

And said one more. Very quietly. Not a name.

"Root."

Nobody said anything.

Then Oona, beside her, in her coat, with her teapot, said: "Goodnight, love." To the eldest. Very far away.

And under the porch, under the house, under the hollow and the garden and the whole of Avalon, something very old and very far off sang back.

Genny's baby kicked during the names. Genny says so. She says it kicked at Root and didn't stop until Oona said goodnight.

Halloway, who was on the bench beside Sefa, said that was very early for a baby to know anything.

Mother said Dask babies always know more than they should.

Wren said the number at the dawn count, the morning we went. Like every morning.

"One billion, three hundred and forty-one million," said Wren. "Give or take."

A pause.

"And everyone who's going," said Wren, "is coming home."

She's never said that before. She doesn't say things that aren't numbers.

Konrad wrote it anyway. On the front of the sheet. Under Avalon. Home. All. In his best hand, very straight, so nobody could say afterward that he'd written it small because he didn't believe it.

Then he handed the pen to Ingrid. And she underlined it.

Days 6834–7024. Gathering.

Genny told Mother on a wet morning; ten weeks, building itself. Callum sat down on the bottom step and Rowan said breathe, Cal. Nan Vey: a dozen small white shirts, you'll do. Garnet: I'm not, not yet; I'm so happy for her I can't draw; she drew anyway. Lio asked the ground and it wanted to be a step, for somebody to sit on. Bell taught the breaking and the joining; Dory: that's what Dad did, the second ship. Ithel teaching Bahamut his letters with the silver points. One billion, three hundred and forty million, and one more on the way. Konrad: +1. In the spring, Tiamat: the body is gathering, all of it, since we broke the world where they're born. It's coming straight to Root. The eldest: it knows because I sang toward the middle for you, and I would choose it again. Halvane: the middle's open; grey ships, finished this time, following the body to take what's left. Okafor: then she goes. The eldest: no; if I go somewhere safe, it comes to Avalon. Okafor: it already knows where we are; we can't stand in two places. Mother: then come here; bring the old one in; put her by the stove. The ground laughed. Dory held the line and Root came: Halvane and Tiamat put her between Avalon and Ister, the most protected place in our sky, where anything has to come past one of us first. Tiamat: the middle of the family. Mother: by the stove. Thirty days, perhaps forty. Mother: Maris, you'd better start. ROOT. ISTER. AVALON. A line round all three. Mother to Genny: you're not going; neither is Callum. Okafor: everyone who can, here, to the three of us. Mother: a smith and a grandmother at every arch; this isn't fetching; that's why; I lift. Lio asked to go; Dory asked her to stay and make the warm rain. Corin: then I'll hum for days. Konrad asked Ingrid not to go, so she'd know he'd wanted to. Three hundred of the unfinished ones walked across the north field and put their hands out to Varra: a wall doesn't ask who's standing on it. Holt: first in, so they see someone old with his cap off. The eldest asked Dory to stand beside her and hold the rest: bring your grandmother's teapot. The six of us on the roof under Risa's storm till it was light.