Chapter 468 Back

We came home on the twenty-third morning. At the count.

The white ship put us down at the edge of the Watch, where it had picked us up, and Dory took us the rest of the way. Up the thread. One breath. Onto the red glass.

Mother was halfway through the names.

She didn’t stop. She looked up, once, when we came out of the arch, all eleven of us. And then she looked back down at the names and kept going, to the end. All of them. The way she does every morning. Ithre and Arreth and the Lenn and the steam people and the six on Tiamat’s wall and the forty-one stars and Ceren and everyone.

At the end she said one more.

“And everyone who went to the Assize,” said Mother. “Who came back.”

Oona said: “Goodnight, love.”

Then Mother poured.

Konrad wrote the date.

On the sheet. Gone to the Assize. At the bottom, on the line that said Back. He wrote the day, very small, very neat, in his good pen. Then he wrote six names under it. Then he stopped, and looked up at the eleven of us standing on the red glass with our cups, and wrote five more.

“You said six,” said Konrad. To me. Not looking up. “You took eleven.”

“It was a court,” I said. “It needed advocates.”

Konrad looked at Iolo Venn, who was pouring his first cup out on the glass again, the way he had on the morning we left. Very pleased with himself.

“Hm,” said Konrad. And wrote, in the margin: Brought five extra. All back.

Wren counted.

She’d been counting the whole time we were gone, Mother said. Every person who came up the hill to ask if there was news. She’d kept the sheet on her knee on the porch steps every day for twenty-three days. Aune was meant to do it initially, then the plan changed and she came with us to the assize. Wren had taken the sheet back and done it for her.

Wren gave it to her at the count. Aune looked at it for a long time.

“Four thousand one hundred and six,” said Wren. “Not counting the ones who came more than once. Miss Pell came every day. So did Abbe. So did Oss, with her ears up, and the steam people from the rain valley, and the Lenn grandmother Ollin, and Ilas, who’s a hundred and ninety-four and walked up the hill every morning without her stick.”

Aune didn’t say anything.

“You said count them,” said Wren. “So you could tell him how many.”

Aune turned round. And told me.

“Four thousand one hundred and six,” said Aune.

I didn’t say anything either. I couldn’t.

Andraste was at the top of the porch steps.

With Holdfast. On its hook behind her, by the kitchen door, where it had stayed for twenty-three days. She didn’t come down the steps. She waited till I came up them.

She looked at me for a long time.

“Nobody shut the door,” she said.

“No.”

“I’d have come through it.”

“I know.”

She looked at Aune, behind me on the steps. At the white ribbon on her wrist.

“You held his hand,” said Andraste.

“Nineteen days,” said Aune. “Every one.”

Andraste nodded. Very slowly. Then she untied the ribbon from Aune’s wrist. And tied it back on her own.

“Mine again,” said Andraste. “Till next time.”

Then she put her arms round both of us. Which Andraste doesn’t do. Not on the porch. Not in front of everyone.

She did it for a long time.

Kesh and Lio and Oona had the warm rain ready in the courtyard.

They’d been making it every morning for twenty-three days, Kesh said. In case. Nobody came home through the arches, so it just fell on the stones and the bench by the kitchen door and Ilas and Abbe and Sefa, who sat in it anyway.

This morning someone did.

So we stood in it. All eleven of us. In the courtyard of the house on the rise, with the warm rain coming down out of a clear sky, and our faces turned up.

Senna Thale stood in it with her eyes shut for a long time. Four hundred and something. Very thin. Very dry. She’d never stood in warm rain. The Aldri don’t make it.

“Hm,” said Senna Thale. In the end. Very dry. “That’s very pleasant.”

Iolo Venn laughed so hard he had to sit down on the bench beside Ilas.

Teo came across the courtyard to me. Through the rain. With his four arms folded.

He looked at my hands. At the stick, which I’d carried for twenty-three days in my coat, and never needed.

“Nobody shut the door,” said Teo.

“No.”

“Then you didn’t need it.” He held out his small hands, the lower ones. “Can I have it back?”

I gave it back.

He looked at it for a long time. Then he did one of Andraste’s forms with it, very carefully, there in the rain, in front of everyone. All the way through.

“He stayed standing,” said Teo. To Andraste. Very seriously.

“He did,” said Andraste.

And Tiri held out her hand.

I gave her the bird. The brass one. Warm from my pocket. It hadn’t flown. It hadn’t needed to.

She looked at it. Then at Corin.

Corin hummed. Two notes. Into it.

Its wings moved. Just a little. The way they had in my hand on the last afternoon.

“It was listening the whole time,” said Corin. “For me. In case.”

“Did it hear you?”

“Every hour,” said Corin. “I hummed every hour. Like when Aune went to Root.” He looked at me. “Even at night. Tiri woke me up.”

Tiri went the colour of the inside of a shell. And didn’t say anything.

Dory found Risa in the kitchen.

I saw it from the doorway. Risa was at the long table, very still, with a cup she hadn’t drunk. She’d come down to the red glass for the count with everyone else, and seen us come through, and then she’d gone straight back up the hill to the kitchen without saying anything at all, and sat down.

Dory stood in front of her.

“Mum,” said Dory. “I brought myself back.”

Risa looked up at her.

“You said I’d forget,” said Dory. “You said I’d bring everyone back but myself. Gran said it twice.” She sat down. Across the table. “I didn’t forget. I thought about it every morning. When I heard Gran pouring. I thought: that’s the bit I’m not allowed to forget.”

Risa didn’t say anything for a long time.

Then she put her cup down. And reached across the long table. And put her hand on the back of Dory’s head, the way she did at the arch at midnight, the way she has since Dory was small.

“Good girl,” said Risa.

Dory laughed. She’s twenty-two. Nobody’s called her a good girl in years.

She didn’t seem to mind.

She told me that night. On the roof.

Eight of us. The storm out at sea, four miles out, the way Okafor asked. Everyone very tired and very glad and not saying so.

Andraste was sharpening Holdfast. She stopped.

“Halloway checked,” she said. “Last week. While you were in the court.”

Everyone went quiet.

“She says it’s early,” said Andraste. “She says it’s definite.” She put the whetstone down. “She says it’s probably a girl. She can’t be sure yet. But probably.”

Sera sat up so fast she nearly rolled off the slates.

“A girl,” said Andraste. “For the ridge.” She picked the whetstone up again. And put it down again. “I wanted to tell you in person. Not on a band.”

Hana, on the slates beside her, put her hand very flat on her own middle. And then reached over and put the other one on Andraste’s.

Andraste let her.

Risa lay back on the warm slates with her hands behind her head and looked at the stars.

“Three,” said Risa. “Three of us at once.” She laughed. At the sky. “Halloway’s going to need more beds.”

“Halloway’s going to need more Halloways,” said Luna.

Aune, at the end, very quiet, said: “I said after the wedding. Tiri’s.”

“We know,” said Sera. “You’re Aldri. You’re good at years.”

“I am,” said Aune. She lay back too. Between Risa and Hana. With her grey hair spread out on the slates. “I’m very good at years.” A pause. “I’m going to be very jealous for all of them.”

Everyone laughed.

The storm out at sea lit up all along its edge.

Ithel came up the hill on the first evening.

He didn’t ask. He stood at the bottom of the porch steps in his school clothes with his hands in his pockets and looked at me, and I knew what he wanted to know.

I took the list out of my coat. Folded. The way I’d folded it at the end of the tenth day.

“All of them,” I said. “Every name. Every number. Your line at the end.”

Ithel didn’t say anything.

“They let me finish,” I said. “Nobody stopped me. It took all day.”

“Did they listen?”

“At the end,” I said, “the whole hall breathed out. Hundreds of thousands of people. All at once.”

Ithel looked at the list in my hand for a long time.

Then he came up the steps and took it. And unfolded it. And looked at it. At his own small writing, two thousand eight hundred and six worlds, every one he’d held a door to when he was small.

“I don’t have to remember them now,” said Ithel. Very quietly. “Do I. They’ve been said. In front of everyone.”

“No,” I said. “You don’t have to remember them now.”

He folded the list back up. And gave it to Mother. Who was in the doorway. Of course.

“Will you keep it?” said Ithel. “With the names. In the mornings.”

“I’ve already got them,” said Mother. “Every one. Since the first door.” She took it anyway. “But I’ll keep it. So you can come and look whenever you like.”

Ithel went home to New Hearth that night and slept, Isolde said, for fourteen hours. She said he’d never once slept through a night before. Not since he came.

Halloway took Abena on properly the week after.

Not as a girl who breathes for people in the long ward. As a doctor. She came up the hill with a board and put it on the long table in front of Hana, very formal, the way Halloway does things, and said:

“Three of them at once. Sera, Hana, Andraste. And Enna’s twins due before any of them. And Pell’s fourth birthday, and small Holt’s knees, which are going to be like his namesake’s, I can tell already.” She put her finger on the board. “I need another doctor. I want your daughter.”

Hana looked at Abena. Abena, at the end of the table, with her hands folded, very still.

“She’s not finished growing,” said Hana.

“Neither am I,” said Halloway. “I’m older than I look, and Avalon keeps taking years off me whether I like it or not. We’ll finish together. I’ve got a great deal left to teach her and, at this rate, a great deal of time to do it in.”

Abena didn’t say anything. But she stood up. And went and stood beside Halloway at the end of the table. And put her hands behind her back, the way Halloway stands.

Hana looked at them both for a long time.

“Breathe for me,” said Hana. “When it comes. My girl.”

“I will, Mum,” said Abena.

The news went out on every band.

Not from us. From the Assize. The same voice, the one from the middle seat, very clear, very formal, to every world the Collective’s web could reach. The way the charges had gone out.

The charges against the worlds called Avalon and Ister, the man Lucas Dask, and the elder Halvane are postponed.

The conduct of the Prime of the Collective is under examination by the Assize under its own law.

No warrant will issue.

That was all. Nobody explained. Nobody said what had happened in the hall for nineteen days.

But Imre Oshan says, on Ister, the first copies of her account were in the deepest city’s shops within a week, and gone in a day. And Halvane says the Aldri ears picked up something on the far bands, very faint, from the web, in the second week after we came home.

People were talking.

Not on the Collective’s bands. On their own. On the old ones. From the small worlds at the very back of the far hall. Saying the numbers to each other. Two thousand eight hundred and six. Nine hundred and twelve. Four hundred and six.

And one word, over and over.

Received.

Merrow came back on the thirty-first day after we got home.

Nan Vey saw it first. She was at the arch on the red glass the way she always is in the mornings, with her iron, before the count. Beside the end of the Merrow arch that Mother had told Kyria’s cutters to leave standing. Opening onto nothing. With the cup on its step, full, that Nan Vey had put there every morning for six weeks.

The arch opened.

Not ours. Theirs. Somebody on Merrow had cut it again.

And the old grandmother came through. The one in the grey shawl, very small, with her hands shaking. She stood on the step of the arch and looked down at the cup.

Then she looked up at Nan Vey.

“You left it open,” said the grandmother from Merrow.

“Dot said to,” said Nan Vey. She put her iron down. “Your cup’s been there every morning. I kept it full.”

The grandmother from Merrow picked it up. In both shaking hands. It was cold; it was dawn. She drank it anyway.

“We heard,” she said. “On the old band. Received. Received.” She held the cup very tight. “We’d paid tithe too. A long time ago. Before the islands. We’d asked once.” She looked at Nan Vey. “Received.”

Nan Vey didn’t say anything.

“We cut it again,” said the grandmother from Merrow. “Last night. All of us together. The children held the edges.” She put the cup down. “We told the polite ship no. This morning. It went away.”

Mother was coming down the hill with the pot.

She saw. Of course she did. She didn’t hurry; she never does. She came down the hill to the red glass and across it to the Merrow arch and stood in front of the old grandmother from Merrow in her grey shawl, and looked at her for a long time.

Then she poured her a second cup.

“Welcome back, love,” said Mother.

Okafor wrote it on the slate. Under Merrow: yes. She crossed out yes. With one line.

And wrote beside it:

Came back.

She stood looking at it for a long time.

“That’s how it starts too,” said Okafor. “One. A small one.”

Mother put a cup in front of her.

“Keep counting,” said Mother.

Senna Thale stayed for dinner.

Mother asked her. At the count. She said anyone who’d stood in a court for nineteen days on behalf of her son was having dinner at the long table whether they liked it or not, and Senna Thale said she’d never been told what to do by anyone in four hundred years, and Mother said there was a first time for everything.

So she stayed.

She sat at the long table beside Mother, very thin, very straight, very dry, and ate everything Mother put in front of her, and didn’t say much. Then, at the end, with the cups, she said:

“Your son reads a list very well.”

“He’s had practice,” said Mother. “He hears me every morning.”

“Two thousand eight hundred and six names,” said Senna Thale. “The Assessors didn’t stop him once. I’ve never seen a court do that.” She turned her cup round in her long hands. “Three hundred years ago I stood in front of the Sorn for Ister and read a list too. Shorter. Forty worlds. They stopped me after three.”

“What happened?”

“We lost,” said Senna Thale. “And then we went back to running. Three hundred more years of it.” She drank her tea. “I’ve been waiting for a rematch since. I didn’t think I’d get one with the Sorn’s own court gone into the ground. I didn’t think there’d be anywhere left to stand.” She put the cup down. “Your son found one.”

Mother poured her another cup.

“Did you win?” said Mother.

Senna Thale thought about it for a long time. Very dry.

“Postponed,” she said. “Which, at the Assize, after four thousand years, is the closest anyone’s ever come.” A pause. “I’ll take it.”

Iolo Venn went to the park.

On the second day home. On his own. He said he’d heard about it in the deepest city, and he’d seen the figure of me in the toy shop window with the light-up eyes, and he wanted to see the wheel.

He found Pip’s stall instead.

Pip told me about it. She said a very tall young Aldri in a grey robe came to the stall on a Tuesday and paid for three throws at the tin cups and won all three, very easily, without even looking, and then stood there smiling at her as if he expected applause.

“Davo was there,” said Pip. “He’s there every Tuesday.”

“What did Davo do?”

“He paid for three throws,” said Pip, “and missed all three. On purpose. Like he always does.” She folded her arms. “And then he looked at the Aldri and said: you won. So you have to go.”

Iolo Venn, Pip says, looked at Davo for a long time. Then at Pip. Then at Davo again.

Then he laughed. And bowed. All the way. The Aldri way. To Davo.

And went.

“He gave me back the prizes,” said Pip. “All three. He said he didn’t need them. He said he’d never seen anyone lose so well.”

Imre Oshan read Mother the first chapter. On the porch, on the fourth evening, before she went back to Ister. From her papers, very slowly, in our language, which she’d learned at the long table from Mother in a week.

It was about the morning we left. The thirtieth day. Mother pouring eleven cups on the red glass. Iolo pouring the first one out without being told. The second cup in my coat.

Mother listened to all of it. With her own cup going cold in her hands.

When Imre Oshan finished, Mother didn’t say anything for a long time.

“You got the cups right,” said Mother. In the end.

“I always get the cups right,” said Imre Oshan. “Everything else is easier.”

Holt slept for three days.

Halloway made him. She came up the hill with her bag on the first morning, before he’d even had his tea, and listened to his knees, and said a word I’m not going to write, and put him to bed in the end room by the garden wall and sat by the door herself in case anyone tried to wake him.

“Nineteen days standing,” said Halloway. To Mother. In the kitchen. “At seventy-two. On a stone floor. With his cap in his hands.” She shook her head. “I told him: sit down whenever you can. He said it mattered every day.”

“It did,” said Mother.

“I know it did,” said Halloway. “That’s what makes me so cross.”

She did something to his knees on the second day. I don’t know what. Asha and Eve helped, with the floating spheres, and Abena breathed for him while they did it, and the Aldri doctor stood at the end of the bed and said things in Aldri very quietly.

On the fourth morning, Holt walked down the hill to the red glass for the count. Without stopping. Small Holt on his shoulders.

He took his cap off for the names. And put it back on.

“Good as new,” said Holt.

“Better,” said Halloway. From the porch. “I’ve got a whole page on them now.”

The Overseer went back to the end of the line.

To Crane’s room at the red glass end of the trains, where he sits in the mornings with the dog and Crane, watching the trains go out. In Holt’s first cap.

People came to see him. That surprised him. People from the hill. People from the Kiln, and the stock worlds, and Ithel’s two thousand eight hundred and six. People who’d been in collars and lines because of the houses he sat beside his whole life.

They came to say thank you.

He didn’t know what to do. Crane told me. He said the Overseer sat there in Holt’s cap with his hands on his knees, and every person who came, he stood up for, and listened, and didn’t say anything, and when they’d gone he sat down again.

On the third day, a grey one came.

One of the finished ones. Swaying. One Mother sits with in the mornings. It came along the platform very slowly, the way they move when they’re coming back, and stopped in front of the Overseer. And stood there.

The Overseer stood up.

The grey one didn’t say anything. The finished ones mostly can’t, yet. It just put its hand on its chest. And held it out.

The Overseer looked at it for a long time.

Then he took Holt’s cap off. And held it out back.

Crane says he’s never seen anything like it. He says neither of them moved for a long time. Then the grey one turned round and went back along the platform, very slowly, swaying.

The Overseer sat down. And put the cap back on.

“It said thank you,” he said to Crane. “It doesn’t have the words yet. But I know how they think. It said thank you.”

Halvane went home to Ilas.

I should have written that first. It was the first thing he did. He came through the arch onto the red glass with the rest of us, and had his cup, and poured the first one out, and then he walked straight across the glass and up the hill to the wing, very tall, very fast for an Aldri, and Ilas was on the bench by the kitchen door with Abbe and Sefa where she always is.

She didn’t get up. She’s a hundred and ninety-four.

He knelt down. All the long way down. In front of the bench. And put his head in her lap.

Abbe and Sefa got up and went inside without being asked.

Ilas told Aune what he said. Aune told me. On the roof.

“He said: I’m too old for courts, Ilas.” Aune smiled. “And Grandmother said: you’ve been saying that for two hundred years.”

“What did he say?”

“He said: I mean it this time,” said Aune. “And she said: you said that the last time too.” Aune lay back on the slates. “Then she made him tea. She hasn’t made him tea in fifty years. She says he always forgets to drink it.”

“Did he drink it?”

“All of it,” said Aune. “Then he fell asleep on the bench with his head on her shoulder. She sat there all afternoon so as not to wake him.”

The third star went out in the sixth week.

Halvane had it right. Within nine days. There were people round it: very few. Six thousand. On a moon of a gas giant, in a single city under a dome, very old, the last of a people who’d been dying out for centuries anyway. They knew. They’d known for a long time that something was eating stars nearby. They’d been waiting for it.

Merrit went first again. A hundred and thirteen. She said she’d got the hang of it.

They didn’t need persuading. They were waiting at the edge of their dome when she came through, all six thousand, with everything they owned in bags. The oldest of them, very small, very bent, met Merrit at the arch.

“We heard the old band,” she said. Through Dot. “We heard about the cups.”

She poured the first one out before Merrit had finished pouring it.

Ingrid wrote it on Warned that night. 6,004. Everyone.

Then, under it, smaller: They were ready.

The star-eater turned.

Halvane found it. At the long table. On the morning after the third star. With Mara Quell, who’d stayed on Avalon after the Assize because she said she’d never had so many numbers to work with in her life, and Bell, and Tiamat on the silver from the ninth station.

He put a new sheet on the long table. Beside the old one. The forty-one stars.

“It’s grown,” said Halvane. “Again. Since the Lenn. It’s bigger than it was, and faster, and hungrier.” He pointed at the old sheet. “It’s eaten six of these in nine weeks. Faster than I said.” He pointed at the new one. “And it’s changed its mind. About where it’s going.”

“Where?”

Mara Quell answered. Very quietly.

“Toward the web,” she said.

Nobody said anything.

“The small red stars are thicker that way,” said Mara Quell. “Toward the Collective’s edge. A great many of them. Old ones. Dim ones.” She laid the new sheet flat. “It’s following the food. The way Halvane said it would.”

“And round them?”

Mara Quell didn’t answer straight away.

“Collective worlds,” she said. “Hundreds. Members. Tithe-payers. The small ones at the very back of the far hall.” She looked up. “The ones who stood up when you read Ithel’s list.”

Okafor stood at the slate with the chalk in her hand for a long time.

“They charged us with genocide,” she said. In the end. Very level. “Three months ago. On every band.”

“Yes,” said Halvane.

“The Prime wanted Dory for his son and three women for himself. He’s still the Prime.”

“Yes.”

“And the Collective’s had four thousand years to help those worlds,” said Okafor. “And marked every request received.”

“Yes,” said Mara Quell.

Okafor put the chalk down.

“Then who’s going to warn them?” she said.

Nobody answered.

Then Mother, at the stove, not turning round, said:

“Somebody old walks out first.”

Everyone looked at her.

“They’re not ours,” said Okafor.

“Neither were the Lenn,” said Mother. “Or the steam people. Or Ithre. Or Merrow.” She turned round with the pot. “Neither was anyone, once. Not until somebody walked out to them with a cup.”

“The Collective will say we’re interfering. In its jurisdiction.”

“Then the Collective can come and stop us,” said Mother. “On every band. In front of the small worlds at the back of the far hall.” She poured Okafor a cup. “I’d like to see it try.”

Okafor looked at the slate for a long time.

Then she picked the chalk back up. And under Before the light goes out, she wrote:

Theirs too.

I sat on the porch at the turn.

With Mother. With Oona lifting the step. With Dory beside me on the top step, the way she used to sit when she was small and had a question too big for the house.

“Dad,” said Dory.

“I know.”

“We just got back.”

“I know.”

“And we’re going to go and help the people who charged us.”

“Yes.”

Dory thought about it.

“That’s the most Gran thing we’ve ever done,” said Dory.

“Yes,” I said. “I think it is.”

Mother, beside us, lifted the porch a finger’s width. And held it.

“About time,” said Mother.

The old man from the back of the far hall sent a message on the old band.

Tiamat caught it. From the ninth station. Very faint. Very far. In a language none of us knew, that Dot turned for us, very slowly.

His name is Ebb. His world is called Lantern. It’s very small. It’s at the very edge of the web, near where the small red stars are thickest. Mara Quell found it on the new sheet on the first night. It’s ninth on the star-eater’s new path.

He didn’t know that. He couldn’t have.

His message said: My grandmother’s request is on my kitchen table. Your advocate gave it to me. I read it to my grandchildren. They asked if anyone would ever answer it.

I said I didn’t know.

I’d like to be able to tell them.

I sent one back. I asked Okafor first. She said yes before I’d finished asking.

It was very short. I said it into the silver on the long table, the way I said come and get me to the white ship, and Tiamat sent it out along the old band, very far, to the edge of the web.

This is Lucas Dask. Someone’s coming. Tell them it’s all right.

And then, because Mother was standing behind me with the pot:

Put the kettle on.

Days 8966–9031. Back.

Home at the count; Mother finished every name first, then: and everyone who went to the Assize, who came back. Konrad wrote the date on Back, then six names, then five more: brought five extra, all back. Aune’s count: four thousand one hundred and six came up the hill to ask; Miss Pell and Abbe and Oss and Ollin and Ilas every day. The warm rain for eleven; Senna: that’s very pleasant. Teo took his stick back: he stayed standing. Corin hummed every hour, even at night. Dory to Risa: I brought myself back; good girl. Andraste: nobody shut the door; I’d have come through it; she took the ribbon back: mine again, till next time; and held us both, on the porch, in front of everyone. On the roof: Halloway checked while you were in court; probably a girl; for the ridge. Hana’s hand on Andraste’s. Risa: three of us at once; Luna: Halloway’s going to need more Halloways; Aune: I’m going to be very jealous of all of them. Ithel: I don’t have to remember them now; Mother will keep the list; he slept fourteen hours. Halloway took Abena on as a doctor: three at once and Enna’s twins; breathe for me when it comes. The Assize on every band: postponed; the Prime under examination; no warrant; and on the old bands from the back of the far hall, the numbers, and received, received. Merrow cut their arch again, the children holding the edges; Nan Vey: your cup’s been there every morning; we told the polite ship no. Mother: welcome back, love. Slate: Merrow: came back; that’s how it starts too. Senna at the long table: forty worlds, they stopped me after three; postponed is the closest anyone’s come in four thousand years; I’ll take it. Iolo won three throws at Pip’s and Davo lost three: you won, so you have to go; he bowed and gave the prizes back. Imre to Mother: I always get the cups right. Holt slept three days; Halloway: that’s what makes me so cross; good as new; better. People came to thank the Overseer; a grey one held its hand out and he held out Holt’s cap: it said thank you; it doesn’t have the words yet. Halvane put his head in Ilas’s lap: I’m too old for courts; you’ve been saying that two hundred years; she made him tea for the first time in fifty. The third star: six thousand under a dome, waiting with their bags; they’d heard about the cups; Ingrid: they were ready. The star-eater has grown and turned toward the web: hundreds of Collective worlds, the ones at the back of the far hall. Okafor: then who’s going to warn them? Mother: somebody old walks out first; neither was anyone, once; I’d like to see it try. Slate: theirs too. Dory: the most Gran thing we’ve ever done. About time. Ebb of Lantern, ninth on the new path, read his grandmother’s request to his grandchildren; they asked if anyone would ever answer. Someone’s coming; tell them it’s all right; put the kettle on.