Chapter 459 Two Hundred and Thirty

Okafor left READY on the slate.

Under the six. In letters nobody could miss. And then, on the second morning after the map room, she came into the kitchen and stood in front of it for a long time with the chalk in her hand, the way she does, and wrote one more line underneath. Small.

And live.

Mother read it from the stove.

“Hm,” said Mother. “About time.”

“They’re years away,” said Okafor. She put the chalk down. “Tiamat says so. Halvane says so. If we spend every one of those years standing on a wall waiting, we’ll be no good to anyone when they get here.” She sat down at the long table. “We’ll get ready. We’ll build. We’ll listen. And in between, we’ll have a summer.”

Mother put a cup in front of her.

“Several,” said Mother.

So this is the summer.

Mother says I always write the hard bits short and the good bits shorter, and that one day someone’s going to read the notebooks and think we never did anything but fight. So I’m going to write this one long.

Corin went to the grandmothers.

I didn’t know he was doing it. Nobody did, at first. That’s how Corin does things. He decides, and then he hums for a bit, and then he goes and does it, and you find out afterward when someone says did you know your son came to see me?

Kyria said it first. On the ridge on Hyrran, when Andraste went for her monthly visit.

“Your son came to see me,” said Kyria.

“Which one?”

“You have one son,” said Kyria. “Corin.” She was sharpening her first blade. She didn’t look up. “He sat on that rock for an hour and explained to me why I should tie the last knot.”

Andraste sat down very slowly on the next rock.

“He’s twelve,” said Andraste.

“I know how old he is,” said Kyria. “I’ve tied a knot for every year he’s been sweet on her. And one extra, the first night, because I could see it coming. There are nine.” She tested the edge with her thumb. “He says he’s not asking to be married. He says he knows he’s too young. He says he’s asking for the ribbon to mean something. So that when Tiri goes to Ister for the winter terms, which she will now, at fifteen, everyone there knows she’s got someone waiting.”

“What did you say?”

“I said I’d think about it,” said Kyria. “And then he went to see your husband’s mother.”

Mother told me. On the porch. At the turn.

“Corin came to see me,” said Mother.

“Andraste said.”

“He brought me a cup of tea,” said Mother. “He made it himself. It was terrible.” She lifted the porch a finger’s width, the way she does, and Oona beside her lifted the step. “He said he remembered when Halvane asked, and I said no. He said I was right. He said a promise about them that they didn’t make wasn’t a promise at all.”

“He was seven.”

“He remembered it word for word,” said Mother. “Then he said: so now I’m making it. Me. And Tiri’s making it too. And we’d like the grandmothers to keep it for us. Because grandmothers are good at keeping things.”

She put the porch down.

“He’s been to every one of them,” said Mother. “Every grandmother on the hill. Maura. Ingrid. Abena Osei. Old Efua, who shouted at him and then gave him a biscuit. Abbe. Sefa. Ilas. Aune, who isn’t a grandmother but he said she’d be one someday so she counted.” Mother shook her head. “He went to the eldest. On Root. On his own. Through the arch. He told Dory he wanted to ask her something and Dory took him and waited at the bottom of the plateau.”

“What did the eldest say?”

“She said she didn’t know what a betrothal was,” said Mother. “So he explained it. For an hour. She said it was the most interesting thing anyone had told her since birthdays.”

The grandmothers met at the long table.

On a Thursday. In the evening. With the door shut, which it never is, and Okafor sent out to the porch, which she’s never been, and Holt sitting on the bench outside the door with his cap on his knee in case anyone tried to go in.

I wasn’t allowed in. None of us were. Not Andraste. Not Aune. Not Halvane, who came through the arch from Ister in his robe and stood in the courtyard looking at the shut door and said he hadn’t felt so nervous since the engine’s first jump.

It took three hours.

Corin sat on the top step the whole time. With Tiri. Not saying anything. Tiri’s a head and a half taller than him still, and she sat with her knees up and her chin on them, and he sat beside her very straight, the way the General sits, humming. Two notes. Over and over.

Kesh and Lio and Oona made the warm rain in the courtyard for them. Even though nobody was coming home.

The door opened.

Mother came out first. Then Kyria, with the ribbon in her hand. Plain. Grey. With nine knots in it. Then all the rest. Every one of them. They came out onto the porch and stood in a row along the rail, in the dusk, looking down at the two children on the top step.

Corin stood up.

Tiri stood up. And kept standing up, the way the Aldri do, for a while.

Kyria came down the steps. Slowly. With the ribbon. And knelt in front of them both, which I’ve never seen Kyria do for anyone.

“Hyrran ties a ribbon,” she said. “One knot a year. It doesn’t mean anything. It just keeps count.”

She held it up. The nine knots.

“Until the grandmothers say it does,” said Kyria.

And she tied the tenth.

I’ll write what it means, because Halvane asked me to get it right for the Aldri, and Kyria asked me to get it right for Hyrran, and Mother asked me to get it right for everyone.

It doesn’t mean they’re married. It doesn’t mean they have to be. It means that when they’re grown, if they both still want to, the grandmothers have already said yes. It means nobody else gets to say anything about it. Not Halvane’s treaties, not Okafor’s slate, not anyone. Only the two of them.

And if they don’t want to, when they’re grown, they untie it. Together. And nobody says anything about that either.

That’s the whole of it.

“It’s a promise they made,” said Mother. To Halvane. Afterward. On the porch. “Not one we made for them. We’re just holding it.”

Halvane looked at the ribbon on Tiri’s wrist. She’d tied it there herself, the moment Kyria let go of it. Then held her wrist out to Corin, and he’d tied the bow, very carefully, with his tongue between his teeth.

“Eleven thousand years of treaties,” said Halvane. “And none of them were ever made like this.”

“No,” said Mother. “That’s why they kept needing new ones.”

Tiri went to Ister for the winter terms in the autumn. Like Kyria said. The Aldri send their children to the old schools at fifteen, in the deepest city, where Halvane went, and his mother, and hers.

She goes on the first morning of every term. Through the arch. With the ribbon on her wrist.

Corin walks her to the red glass. Every time. He doesn’t cry. He hums.

Then he comes back up the hill and mends her message-bird. Which she breaks, every time, the morning she leaves. So it’ll need mending while she’s gone.

Pip met someone.

I’ll write it the way Sera told it to me, because Sera told it the way Maura told it to her, and Maura was there.

It was at the stall. In the park. On a Tuesday, which is the quietest day, which is why Pip likes it. Bread-dough balls and tin cups. The same stall she’s run since she was a small girl at the Calders’ table. She’s very grown up now, Pip. Long apron. Same face.

A young man came to the stall.

Aun. Short and broad, the way they are, brown with copper freckles all over, four fingers on each hand, wide gold eyes. From the cliff city on the coast south of Thera. He worked on the trains; he’d come to the park on his day off on his own because all his friends were on shift.

He paid for three throws. And missed all three.

He paid for three more. And missed all three.

Pip watched him do this for an hour.

“You’re doing it on purpose,” said Pip. In the end. With her arms folded.

“Yes,” said the young man.

“Why?”

He went the colour of his freckles. All over.

“Because if I win,” he said, “I’ll have to go.”

Maura was at the next stall. Buying fried things on sticks. She says she dropped all of them.

His name’s Davo. He’s the grandson of Captain Amu, the old one with the stick who sat down on the red glass and cried when Wren said the number, the first day the Third Patience came. His sister’s the Meridian’s navigator.

He comes to the stall every Tuesday now. He’s never won once. Pip says she’s going to let him, one day, when she’s decided.

Sera says that’s a Calder thing. Making them wait.

Maura says it’s a Pip thing. Sera made Liam wait two years for a straight answer about anything, and Liam’s her brother.

Sera says that’s different.

Maura says it isn’t.

They’ve been arguing about it since the summer. They both seem to enjoy it.

Keir and Enna got married in the second of the quiet years.

I didn’t write it at the time. I should have. Mother says it was the best wedding on the hill since the triple one, and that’s saying something, because the triple one had Brock eating the cake before anyone else got any.

They got married in the map room. Of course they did. Under Tiamat’s wall, with Halvane’s light on it and every drawing they’d ever made together pinned up round the edges, from the first release on the first car to the last seam on the eldest’s thread. Enna wore her silver. Keir wore a shirt Nan Vey pressed for him, which she said was the best thing she’d ever pressed, because he’s never once in his life worn a shirt that wasn’t creased.

Aster gave her away. Lights all the way up.

Enna said, when Okafor asked her if she’d take Keir: I knew he’d fixed it.

Keir said, when Okafor asked him: I stopped pretending.

Nobody else understood either of those. They didn’t need to.

Enna’s expecting.

She told the long table at dinner, in the summer, very matter-of-fact, the way she says everything. Between the potatoes and the bread.

“Twins,” she said.

Keir dropped his fork.

“Halloway checked this morning,” said Enna. “Two. A boy and a girl, he thinks.” She looked round the table. “Don’t make a fuss.”

Everyone made a fuss.

I asked the Scarecrow queen about it. Later. At the garden wall.

Because it’s not just Enna. It’s not just Jessa and big Sigmund, years ago. It’s half the hill. Halloway keeps a list now, the way Ilka keeps a list of who stopped. Twins. He says there have been more twins born on Avalon in the last four years than in the whole of Earth’s records for the century before the war.

Avalon is very fertile, said the Scarecrow queen. Very calm. With her head on the stones.

“That’s not an answer.”

It is the answer, said the queen. The old one is very old and very full. She has been waiting a long time for people to live on her. Now they do. She shifted, a little, on the stones. She gives to what grows. Everything grows faster here. Gardens. Children. The old. When a family wants more, she gives more.

“Two at a time.”

Sometimes, said the queen. She likes it. She says it is tidy. Nobody is ever alone in the cradle.

I didn’t say anything.

Your mother was a twin’s mother, said the queen. Your sisters. Did you never wonder?

I hadn’t. Genny and Garnet were born on Earth. Long before Avalon.

Silver runs in your family the way water runs downhill, said the queen. It always finds the easiest way. And the easiest way is two.

The old feel young.

That’s the other thing. It started years ago; the moss woman noticed it first, and Merrit, walking down every stair of the Hill and asking Halloway what was wrong with her. It’s been getting stronger ever since. The eldest’s song made it stronger. The quiet years made it stronger still.

Holt walks up the hill now. All the way. Without stopping. He’s seventy-one and he says he feels forty, and Halloway says that’s about right, by every measure he has.

Abbe beats Wend to the planks every morning on the waiting step. She’s a hundred and something. She won’t say.

Merrit’s a hundred and thirteen. She’s started dancing again. At the barn dances in the forest city, on Saturdays, with the moss woman, who doesn’t dance but sits in the corner and taps her foot and is, according to Merrit, the best company in the whole of Avalon.

Ilas is a hundred and ninety-four, and walked up the long stair from the hall in the spring on her own, without her stick. She stood at the top and looked very surprised and said it was the first time in eighty years.

Halloway did the numbers.

He’d been doing them for years. Since Merrit. Every old person on Avalon who’d let him, and that’s most of them, because the old like being asked things, Mother says. In the long ward, with the Aldri doctor and his ring and Abena breathing for anyone who needed it.

He brought them to the long table in the summer. On a single sheet of paper. He’s not a man for long reports.

“Humans,” said Halloway. “With silver. On Avalon.” He put his finger on a number. “Two hundred and thirty years. Give or take. That’s the middle. Some less. Some more.”

Nobody said anything for a while.

“Two hundred and thirty,” said Mother.

“Give or take,” said Halloway.

“I’m going to be very cross with your father,” said Mother. To me. Very quietly. “If he’s missing two hundred years of this.”

It’s not just humans.

The Hyrrani are worse. Or better. Kyria looks younger than she did the day I met her, and Odra, who’s been at the forges on the ridge for sixty years, says her hands feel like they did when she was apprenticed, and has started making things she gave up making decades ago because her wrists couldn’t take it.

Halloway says the Hyrrani will see three hundred. Easily.

The Kasrai, longer. Varra says her grandmother’s grandmother is still alive on their old world, or was, before the Hungry, and that the Kasrai always lived long; it’s why they had so many knots. She says on Avalon she expects to tie a great many more.

The Aldri live longer than anyone already. Ilas is proof. Halvane says he expects to be very old and very annoying for a very long time, and is looking forward to it.

The Aun. The Ennet. The Caddi. The walkers on the eastern plain. Every people that’s come to Avalon, every one, living longer. Getting younger. Having twins.

“She’s very old and very full,” I said. To Mother. On the porch. “The old one. The Scarecrow queen says she’s been waiting a long time for people.”

“Well,” said Mother. “She’s got them now.”

Trevor’s engaged.

To Teva. The Aldri twin he met at the rail when he was fourteen and said she’s beautiful and the oxygen liked her.

He asked her on the wheel. At the park. At the very top, where it stops for a moment and you can see the whole of Avalon from the sea to the mountains. He’d been planning it for a year, Luna says. He’d asked Ash to make the ring. Ash made it in Odra’s forge on Hyrran, out of a piece of iron from the ridge and a piece of Aldri silver from Ister, and Odra struck it three short and one long and said you’ll do to it, which she’s never said to anything that wasn’t a person.

He asked her at the top of the wheel.

Teva said yes before he’d finished asking.

Then she asked him what he could see. The way she always does.

“You,” said Trevor. “Just you. For once.”

Luna says that’s the most romantic thing she’s ever heard, and she’s going to be insufferable about it for the rest of her life. She says I never said anything like that.

I said I’d once turned a whole football field of gas into nothing at all because she looked at me and said all of it.

Luna thought about that. Then she said that was all right, actually. That counted.

Sigmund is dating Tovi.

Not small Sigmund. Sigmund. He’s asked everyone, very firmly, to stop calling him small. He’s seventeen and taller than his uncle, who’s the big Sigmund, and he lifts things without asking, and he says it’s undignified.

His uncle says he’ll be small Sigmund till the day he dies, because that’s what happens when you’re named after someone who got there first.

Sigmund says his uncle can be old Sigmund, then.

Big Sigmund didn’t like that at all.

We’ve compromised. He’s Sigmund. Unless Risa’s cross with him, in which case he’s small Sigmund, very loudly, from the kitchen door, and he knows exactly what he’s done.

Tovi has stopped swapping places with Teva to fool him. She says it’s no fun because he always knows.

I asked him how.

“She laughs differently,” said Sigmund. Very red. “Teva laughs like she’s surprised. Tovi laughs like she knew already.”

Risa heard that. From the kitchen. She came out onto the porch and looked at him for a long time.

“That’s your grandfather,” she said. “Konrad. That’s exactly the sort of thing he’d notice.”

Sigmund went redder.

Konrad, on the step, with the sheet, didn’t look up. But he wrote something in the margin. Very small. Ingrid showed me afterward.

He gets it from me.

The park is the most visited place on Avalon.

Wren counts it. She counts everything. She started counting the park in the first quiet year, on the step at dawn, after the names, the way she counts the arches: how many went yesterday. She says it’s more than the trains. More than the red glass. More than anywhere.

The Aldri made it better. Halvane’s people. The way they made everything better. The dream rooms, where you lie down and go anywhere. The rides that go up into the sky, past the clouds, high enough to see Root and Ister at noon. The arcade with the games where you fight swarms with light, which the Standing are banned from because they win every time and it upsets the children.

But the wheel’s still the wheel. Pip’s stall’s still Pip’s stall. The fried things on sticks are still the best thing there.

On a summer Saturday there are more people at the park than lived in the whole of Scarecrow, the old Scarecrow on Earth, when I was a boy.

Mother goes every Sunday. With Oona. And small Holt, who shouts at the carousel horses. They lift it at the turn. The whole carousel. While it’s still turning. The park claps every time. Small Holt claps loudest. He thinks they’re clapping for him. Mother hasn’t told him otherwise.

I asked my wives.

On the roof. On a warm night. The six of us, under the stars, the way we’ve sat on that roof since the first night on Avalon. Risa had called a little storm out at sea for the light. Sera had the slates warm. Luna had the drinks cold. Hana was breathing for all of us, very slowly, without meaning to, the way she does when she’s happy. Andraste was sharpening Holdfast, with the ribbon on her wrist and the other on the hilt.

“Does anyone,” I said, “want any more?”

Nobody said anything for a long time.

“More what?” said Andraste. Without looking up.

“Children.”

Andraste stopped sharpening.

I’ll write what everyone said. Because they told me I could, after. And because it’s the best conversation I’ve ever had on a roof.

Sera said yes first. Before anyone. She sat up on the warm slates and said yes like it was the easiest question anyone had ever asked her.

“Calders come in lots,” said Sera. “I said four, at least. Years ago. I’ve got two.” She held up her fingers. “That’s not four.”

“It’s not,” said Risa.

“And the queen says it’ll probably be two at a time now,” said Sera. “So really I’m only asking for one more go.”

Hana said: “Yes.”

That was all. Then she lay back on the slates and looked at the stars and didn’t say anything else for a while.

Then: “A girl. Who breathes. Abena’s got Halloway now. I’d like one who stays in the house.”

Andraste put Holdfast down. On the slates, very carefully.

“I’d like a daughter who holds a blade,” she said. “Thessaly makes doors. Vessa turns. Corin’s going to marry an Aldri and mend birds for the rest of his life.” She looked at the ribbon on her wrist. “I’d like one for my mother. Who’ll stand on the ridge.”

She picked Holdfast back up.

“One,” said Andraste. “Not twins. I don’t care what the queen says.”

Sera laughed so hard she nearly rolled off the roof.

Luna didn’t answer straight away. She doesn’t, with big things. She sat with her knees up and her cold hands round her cup and looked at the sea.

“Trevor’s getting married,” she said. In the end.

“Yes.”

“Elin’s nearly grown.”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be a grandmother,” said Luna. “Probably. Soon.” She turned the cup round. “I’d like to be a grandmother first. For a bit. And then see.”

“That’s allowed,” I said.

“I know,” said Luna. “I just wanted to say it.”

Risa laughed.

Not at anyone. At the sky. At the storm she’d called out over the sea, which went bright for a moment, all along its edge, when she did.

“Three,” said Risa. “Dory and Sigmund and Kesh. A world-breaker, a boy who lifts mountains, and a girl who wears a cloud for a hat.” She shook her head. “Three is a storm. Three is plenty.”

She looked at me.

“Ask me again in fifty years,” said Risa. “We’ve got two hundred and thirty, apparently.”

Nobody said anything for a while.

Then Andraste said: “Lucas. Have you?”

“Have I what?”

“Got two hundred and thirty,” said Andraste.

I didn’t answer.

I didn’t know.

I’d been thinking about it since the long table. Since Halloway put his finger on the number. Two hundred and thirty, give or take, for a human with silver.

I’m not a human with silver. The ring said so. The eldest said so. Becoming a queen, she said.

So I went and asked.

I went to the garden wall first. The next evening. At the turn.

The Scarecrow queen was there. With her head on the stones and her young round her. She lifted her head when I came, the way she does.

You want to know, she said.

“Yes.”

I asked the eldest, said the queen. When the ring told you what you were. I asked her then. I did not tell you, because you did not ask. She was quiet. You are asking now.

“Yes.”

Then we will go to her, said the queen. Both of us. She should say it. Not me.

We went through the arch. The Scarecrow queen and me. And Dory, because Dory heard me thinking about it from the kitchen and put down the bread she was making and came without asking, with flour on her hands.

The eldest’s plateau at dusk. Green. The threads shining. The new range in the south with its snow on it, exactly where it had always been.

Child, said the eldest. To me. Sit down.

I sat down on the grass.

Dory sat beside me.

Queens do not end, said the eldest. Not the way you mean. Not by being old. We can be ended. You have seen it; on Ithre, on the frames. But if nothing ends us, we go on. A pause. I am older than there have been days. I do not grow tired. I do not grow weak. I grow older, and I go on.

“And me?”

You are becoming one of us, said the eldest. I told you. Your body takes from every people it meets, and keeps what is better, and builds itself again, every day. It has done since you were small. It will not stop. The ground under me was very warm. What does not stop building does not stop.

I didn’t say anything.

We do not know, said the eldest. I want to be honest with you, child. Nothing like you has ever been. We do not know. But we think you will not end the way men end. Not old. Not slowly. Not in a bed.

She was quiet for a long time.

We think, said the eldest, you will go on.

I looked at Dory.

She was looking at her hands. At the flour on them.

And your children, said the eldest. Very gently. All of them. The silver runs in them the way it runs in you. Some more. Some less. The ones with black eyes, most of all. A pause. We think they will go on too.

Dory didn’t look up.

“How long?” she said. Very quietly.

I do not know, said the eldest. How long have I gone on? I do not know that either. I stopped counting when there was nothing left to count against.

I sat there a long time.

I thought about Mother. On the porch. Pouring. Two hundred and thirty years, give or take, and she’d already had a lot of them before Avalon started giving any back.

I thought about my wives. Two hundred and thirty. Hyrrani three hundred, easily. Andraste would see three hundred. Luna. Sera. Risa. Hana.

Three hundred years.

And then.

I thought about Holt. Seventy-one, feeling forty. Walking up the hill. Small Holt on his shoulders.

I thought about all of them. Every one on Konrad’s sheet. Every name Mother says in the mornings.

And me, going on.

Dory put her floury hand on mine.

“Dad,” she said.

“I know.”

“Gran.”

“I know.”

She didn’t cry. Neither did I. We sat on the eldest’s plateau in the dusk with the threads shining and the Scarecrow queen beside us with her head on the grass, and didn’t say anything at all.

It is a heavy thing, said the eldest. After a long time. I know. I have carried it longer than anyone.

“How?”

The ground was quiet.

For a long time I did not, said the eldest. I made false roads and sang to children who could not hear me and did not let anyone near enough to lose. A pause. That was not carrying it. That was putting it down and walking away.

“And now?”

Now your mother comes on the first of every month and pours for me and tells me what everyone is doing, said the eldest. And I listen. And I remember. Every one. Every name she tells me. The ground warmed. That is how. You remember them. You keep them. You carry them on. That is what going on is for.

Mother was on the porch when we came back. Of course she was. With the pot.

She looked at my face. At Dory’s.

She didn’t ask. She knew. I don’t know how. She always does.

She poured. Two cups. And sat down on the top step, which she doesn’t, much, and patted the boards on either side of her.

We sat down.

“The eldest told you,” said Mother.

“Yes.”

“She told me last year,” said Mother. “On the first of the month. I asked her.” She looked out at the town. “I wanted to know. Before you did. So I’d know what to say.”

“What do you say?”

Mother didn’t answer straight away. She drank her tea.

“I say,” said Mother, “you’d better write it all down.”

I looked at her.

“Every bit of it,” said Mother. “All of us. The good bits and the hard bits, and the bits you leave out because you think nobody wants to read about people being happy.” She put her cup down. “You’ve been doing it since Scarecrow. Every day. In that notebook.” She patted my knee. “I always wondered why you started. I think I know now.”

“Why?”

“Because one day,” said Mother, “someone’s going to have to remember all of us. And it’s going to be you.”

Dory leaned on her shoulder.

“Gran,” she said. “I don’t want you to go.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” said Mother. “Two hundred and thirty, Halloway says. Give or take.” She put her arm round her. “I’ll be here so long you’ll be sick of me.”

“I won’t.”

“No,” said Mother. “I don’t think you will.”

She looked at me over Dory’s head.

“Write that down too,” said Mother.

So I have.

Days 8574–8701. Two Hundred and Thirty.

Okafor wrote under READY: and live. Mother: about time; several summers. Corin went to every grandmother: Kyria on her rock, Mother with a terrible cup of tea, old Efua who shouted and gave him a biscuit, Aune because she’ll be one someday, the eldest, who said it was the most interesting thing since birthdays. A promise about them they didn’t make wasn’t one; so now I’m making it, and Tiri too, and we’d like the grandmothers to keep it. Three hours behind a shut door. Kyria knelt and tied the tenth knot. It doesn’t mean they must; it means nobody else gets a say. Halvane: none of our treaties were made like this. Mother: that’s why you kept needing new ones. Tiri to Ister at fifteen; she breaks the bird every time so it’ll need mending. Pip and Davo, Amu’s grandson, who misses on purpose because if he wins he’ll have to go; Maura dropped her fried things. Keir and Enna married in the map room; Aster gave her away; I knew he’d fixed it; I stopped pretending. Twins, don’t make a fuss. The queen: Avalon is very fertile and likes it tidy; nobody alone in the cradle; the easiest way is two. Holt feels forty; Merrit dances; Ilas climbed the stair without her stick. Halloway: two hundred and thirty, give or take; Hyrrani three hundred; Mother: I’ll be very cross with your father. Trevor asked Teva at the top of the wheel with Ash’s ring; what can you see? You. Sigmund, not small, unless Risa’s cross; Tovi laughs like she knew already; Konrad: he gets it from me. The park is the most visited place on Avalon. On the roof: Sera yes, four at least; Hana a girl who stays in the house; Andraste one daughter for the ridge, not twins; Luna a grandmother first; Risa three is a storm, ask me in fifty years. Have you got two hundred and thirty? The eldest: queens do not end; you are becoming one of us; what does not stop building does not stop; your children too, the black-eyed most of all. Dory’s floury hand. That is how you carry it: you remember them. Mother knew last year: write it all down; one day someone has to remember all of us, and it’s going to be you. I won’t be sick of you. No. Write that down too.