Chapter 487: Before

Imre Oshan came up the hill with a list.

She doesn’t usually bring lists. She brings a notebook, and she writes in it, and she asks Mother about teapots for a whole afternoon. But this time she had a list. A long grey Aldri slate, covered on both sides in her small careful hand, and she put it down on the long table between the jam and the honey, and sat, because Mother makes her sit, and didn’t say anything for a while.

“The film’s finished,” said Imre Oshan.

“Finished?”

“The filming,” said Imre Oshan. “Isar did the doorway last week. On a shore they built in the second city, out of real red glass, with a lake behind it. He stood in it for nine hours. He wouldn’t move. Not between takes, not to eat. He said you didn’t, so he wouldn’t.” She folded her hands. “Now it goes to the makers. To be put together. Post, they call it. Another year. Maybe less.”

“That’s good,” I said.

“That’s not why I’ve come,” said Imre Oshan.

She turned the slate round. So I could see the top of it.

It said, in Aldri, and then in ours: Before.

“They want another one,” said Imre Oshan.

I looked at her.

“The makers,” she said. “The keepers of the great wall. The whole of Ister, really. They asked before the first one’s even finished. They’ve never done that. Not once. Not in all the time there have been films.” She put her finger on the word at the top of the slate. “They want to know where you came from. Not Earth; the comic did Earth. Avalon. The beginning. The cadet days. The training. The ship. The kit. The first nights. The bases.” She paused. “The Teeming.”

I didn’t say anything for a long time.

Mother put the pot down. Not suddenly. Very carefully. And looked at me down the long table.

“I’d like to write it,” said Imre Oshan. “If you’ll let me. I’d like to get it right.” She turned the slate over. The other side was all names. “And to get it right, they’d like to come and watch. The way Isar watched you. All of them.”

“All of who?”

She read them out.

I’ll put the list down the way she read it, because it’s the list of everyone who was there at the start, and I’ve never seen it all in one place before.

Lucas Dask. Liam Calder. Seraphina Calder. Luna Windsor. Risa Friese. Sigmund Friese. Toby Marsh. Anja Bell. Wren. Juno Pell. Keir. Harrow Dane. Ezra Holt. Edda Saye. Nessa Ward. Priya Lal. General Alaric Windsor. Senator Konrad Friese. Ingrid Friese.

And at the bottom, on a line of its own:

The queens.

“They’ve cast it already,” said Imre Oshan. “Most of it. They want to come up the hill and follow each one of you, the way Isar did. For a week, or two. And ask.” She looked down. “They’ll ask a great deal. They’ll want to know what it was like. All of it.”

“All of it,” I said.

“All of it,” said Imre Oshan.

I’d like to say I said yes straight away. I didn’t. I took a week.

It wasn’t the cadet days. I didn’t mind the cadet days. The training floor in the bubble city, under the lights. Liam being the only one who’d talk to me, the first week, because everyone else had seen my eyes and decided. Toby crying at night in the bunk room, and all of us pretending we couldn’t hear. Sigmund Friese, big Sigmund now, to tell him from Risa’s boy, hating me with his whole chest, and his sister Risa watching him do it and saying nothing, very carefully, the way she says nothing. Luna Windsor at the end of the line in the yard, with her chin up, being a general’s daughter.

I didn’t mind any of that. It was hard, and some of it was cruel, and we were very young. But it was ours, and we came through it, and if the Aldri wanted to see us being young and frightened and stupid on a training floor, they could.

It was the Teeming.

I’ll say it plainly.

When they sent us to Avalon, they told us the Teeming were the enemy. Hostile without exception. Article Five. They told us they were weapons, made by something else to kill us. They told us that whatever came over the rim at night wasn’t a people, it was a swarm, and you didn’t talk to a swarm.

And they came over the rim at night. The first nights. Fast and many and very hungry, and some of us died. Some bases fell. People I’d trained with on the floor under the lights, in the bunk room, in the yard. Wren went quiet. Juno went quiet. The kits went down. People were taken.

And I stood at the edge of my ground, on the first dawn, and looked at them coming up out of the dark, and turned them to salt.

One after another. As fast as they came. Until my nose bled and the weight came down behind my eyes and they stopped coming.

I’ve said the number to Dory, on the porch. I’ve written it here, many times. I’m not going to now.

They weren’t a swarm.

That’s what nobody knew, then. They were young. Most of them. Very young. Sent by queens who’d been lied to as badly as we had, by the same people, for the same reasons. The queens didn’t know what we were. We didn’t know what they were. And somebody had made very sure that neither of us found out before we’d killed enough of each other that it wouldn’t matter.

It mattered.

The Scarecrow queen had young on the rim that dawn.

And now an Aldri film-maker wanted to put it on the great wall in the second city, where a million Aldri stand in the dark. Where the children stand. Children who’ve grown up with Teeming young in the courts on Avalon, and soft queens in their arms, and the Scarecrow queen rising out of the garden-wall playset every time you press the gate.

I thought about a small Aldri girl in the plaza, the kind who stands in the line at the dream room. Watching the Teeming come over the rim at night. Watching them kill people.

Watching me kill them.

I didn’t want her to see that.

I told Imre Oshan so. At the long table. On the eighth day.

I said they could make the film. I said they could have the cadet days and the ship and the kit and all of it. But I said that when it came to the rim, I’d like the things that came over it to be something else. Not the Teeming. Something made up. Something from nowhere, with no queens and no young and no courts on Avalon full of children who’d be in the plaza watching.

“Monsters,” said Imre Oshan.

“Just monsters,” I said. “Nobody’s. So nobody’s frightened of anyone real.”

Imre Oshan looked at me for a long time. Then she wrote it down.

Then she said: “You should ask her.”

So I asked her.

Dory took me down to the garden wall at dusk. And put her hand on the ground by the bed of the gardener’s cutting.

The Scarecrow queen came up.

Slowly. With the soil moving out of her way like water round a stone. With her young on her sides, thirty-one, the forgotten one at the back of her left side. She lowered her head until it was level with mine.

I told her about the film. About the rim. About what I’d asked for.

She didn’t say anything for a long time.

No, said the Scarecrow queen.

I’d never heard her say it. Not to me. Not to anyone. Dory says she’d never heard it either.

No, said the Scarecrow queen again. Through Dory. Very slowly. Not something made up. Us.

“They’ll be frightened of you,” I said. “The children. On Ister. They’ve got you in their rooms. In their arms. They’ll see you come over the rim and kill people and they’ll be frightened.”

Yes, said the Scarecrow queen. They should be.

She told me why. I’ll put it down as near as I can to the way she said it, because Dory said it word for word and Dory doesn’t change words.

We came over the rim, said the Scarecrow queen. My young. Others’ young. We killed. Not because we were made to kill. Because we were told you were the thing that had come to kill us. We believed it. We did not ask.

A pause.

You stood at the edge and made us salt. You did not ask either. You were told we were the thing that had come to kill you. You believed it.

Another pause. Longer.

If you make us into something else, something from nowhere, said the Scarecrow queen, then the children will think the killing was done by monsters. They will think it can only be done by monsters. They will never know it was done by mothers who had been lied to. And by a frightened boy who had been lied to. Who were not monsters at all.

She lowered her head further. Until it was touching the soil.

That is how it happens again, she said. When people think only monsters do it.

I didn’t say anything.

Show us coming over the rim, said the Scarecrow queen. Show the children what we did. Show them what you did. And then show them the morning you came down into the canyon and asked instead of looking. And the first time one of mine said a word to one of yours. And the courts. And the garden wall. A pause. Show them all of it. Not so they are frightened of us. So they are frightened of the lie.

“They’ll cry,” I said.

Good, said the Scarecrow queen. I have cried. You have cried. Let them cry in the dark, in the plaza, safe, with their mothers holding them. It is better than crying later. On a rim. With no one.

I went back up the garden in the dark and sat on the porch for a long time.

Mother brought me a cup. She didn’t say anything. She sat down beside me.

“She’s right,” I said. In the end.

“She usually is,” said Mother.

“I don’t want them to see me do it.”

“I know, love.”

“I don’t want a little girl in the plaza to see me turn something’s child to salt.”

Mother drank her tea.

“Then let her see what you did next,” said Mother. “That’s what she’ll remember. Not the salt. The canyon. The asking. Children always remember what you did next.” She put her hand on my knee. “You did. With your father. You never talk about what he did in the war. You only ever talk about the river, and the rope.”

I told Imre Oshan the next morning. The Teeming. All of it. The rim and the salt and the canyon and the asking and the courts.

But I asked for one thing.

I asked that the queens be shown the way the Scarecrow queen had told it to me. Not as monsters. As mothers who’d been lied to. And that I be shown the same way. Not as a hero on the rim. As a frightened boy who’d been lied to, who believed it, and who had to learn.

Imre Oshan wrote it down.

Then she cried, a bit, which she says she never does, and said that was the first thing anyone had ever asked her for that she’d have done anyway.

Then the actors came.

They came through the Ister arch in the first week of the month, the way the Hedge Table comes through, one at a time, with their bags. Aldri, all of them. Very tall. Very carefully dressed down in plain grey, the way Isar Thenn came, so as not to be noticed. They were all noticed. Every one of them. The children of the house lined the porch rail to watch them come up the hill.

There were twenty.

I’ll say who followed who. Because each of them did, for a week or two, very closely, the way Isar Thenn followed me. And each of them asked a great many questions. And some of the questions were very hard.

The one playing me was young. That’s the first thing. Isar Thenn is going to play me in the second film too, but only at the end, older, looking back; the prequel needs a cadet. A boy. Seventeen.

They’d cast an Aldri boy of nineteen called Tam Orrin, who’d never been in anything, who they’d found in the line at the dream room in the third city, playing me in the battle. He was very tall and very thin and very frightened, and he followed me round for a week without saying anything at all, and then on the eighth day at the long table, out of nowhere, he said:

“Were you frightened of them? The others? On the training floor?”

I thought about it.

“Yes,” I said.

“Of all of them?”

“Of Sigmund,” I said. “Big Sigmund. Risa’s brother. He was bigger than me, and he hated me, and he could put lightning through you.” I looked at Tam Orrin. “And of Luna. Because I liked her and I didn’t know what to do about it.”

Luna, at the other end of the long table, didn’t look up from her bread.

“You still don’t,” said Luna.

Tam Orrin wrote that down too.

Liam’s actor was a big broad Aldri, very loud for an Aldri, which isn’t very loud. He followed Liam for nine days. He learned to drink from Liam’s flask without coughing on the second day, which Liam says is a record. He asked Liam why he talked to me, the first week, when nobody else would.

Liam thought about it for a long time. Then he said: “Because Sera told me to.”

Sera, across the long table, said she’d done no such thing.

“You did,” said Liam. “The first night. You said, that boy looks lonelier than anyone I’ve ever seen and if you don’t go and sit with him I will, and then Dad’ll hear about it.”

Sera didn’t say anything for a while. Then she said she didn’t remember. Then she said she did. Then she went pink and told Liam’s actor to stop writing.

He didn’t stop writing.

Toby’s actor was the youngest. A small Aldri girl, fifteen, playing a boy, because she said the boy was the part she wanted and nobody argued. She followed Toby into the long ward, where he keeps his books, and his counts, and his readers. Toby still counts. Hands, and breaths, and heartbeats. He’s never stopped.

She asked him, on the fourth day, very quietly, if it was true that he cried every night on the training floor.

Toby didn’t say anything for a long time. He’s a grown man now, with the steadiest hands in the long ward.

“Every night,” said Toby. “For the first forty-one.”

“Why forty-one?”

“Because on the forty-second night,” said Toby, “Lucas started humming, the same tune his mother hummed to him, I found out later.” He looked at his hands. “And I didn’t cry. Because someone cared.”

The girl playing him put her pen down.

“I’m going to do that,” she said. “Exactly that. Nobody saying anything.”

“Good,” said Toby. “That was the best night of my life.”

The actors playing my wives were the same ones as before. From the first film. Every one of them had wanted Holdfast; now they had to play us without it, at seventeen, before any of it. Andraste’s actress looked at the list and said there was no Andraste on it. Andraste said that was because she was on the ridge, then, shouting at the snow, and nobody on Avalon had heard of her yet. The actress said she’d wait for the third film. Andraste said she’d better.

Risa’s actress asked Risa about Sigmund. About those days. Her brother, who hated me. Risa told her. All of it. She sat on the north field fence for a whole afternoon and told her. I wasn’t there. Risa says she won’t tell me what she said. She says some things are for the people who are playing you, and not for the people who were there.

Big Sigmund came down the north field halfway through. His actor was with him; they’d been at the archive with Konrad. He stood at the fence for a while and listened to his sister tell a stranger what he was like at seventeen. He didn’t interrupt. At the end of it, he leaned on the fence beside her.

“I was an idiot,” said big Sigmund.

“You were,” said Risa.

“Put that in,” said big Sigmund. To both actresses, and to his own actor, who was writing. “Exactly that. I was an idiot, and she let me find out on my own.”

Small Sigmund, who’s named for him, sat at the other end of the fence and didn’t say anything. Then he got up and put his hand on his mother’s shoulder. And then, after a moment, on his uncle’s.

Anja Bell’s(now Anya Marsh) actor followed her into the map room and didn’t come out for three days. Bell says she’s the first person who’s ever asked to check her sums. Anya says she liked her very much. Anya says she was wrong twice.

Wren’s actress went to the dawn count every morning. All two weeks. She stood at the back of the arch with her own slate, and wrote down what Wren wrote, in her own hand, very carefully.

On the last morning she asked Wren what it was like. Going quiet. On the base, at the start. When the kit went down and the lights went and nobody came.

Wren didn’t answer for a long time. She finished the count first. She always finishes the count first. Then she put the slate down.

“Quiet,” said Wren. “That’s what it was. That’s all. Very quiet. For a very long time.” She looked at the arch. “So now I count. Out loud. Every morning. Every name. So nobody ever has to be that quiet again.”

The actress didn’t write that down. She said afterwards she didn’t need to. She said she’d remember it for the rest of her life.

Juno’s actress was the bravest, I think. Juno doesn’t talk much. Not about the start. Not about the quiet. Not to anyone. She guards rooms. She sits on the floor with her back against the wall and her arms folded and makes sure nothing comes through the door that shouldn’t.

The actress sat on the floor next to her. For two weeks. Outside every door Juno guarded. Not saying anything. With her back against the wall and her arms folded.

On the last day, Juno said one thing. To her. Nobody else heard it.

The actress came up the hill afterwards and sat at the long table and didn’t say anything for an hour. Then she asked Mother if Juno’s mother, Harriet Pell, who runs the school, would let her sit in on a lesson. Mother said she was sure she would.

Miss Pell let her. She sat in the back of the room for a morning and watched Juno’s mother teach, and at the end she went up to the front and thanked her, very formally, the Aldri way, standing.

Miss Pell asked what for.

The actress said: For not letting her go quiet for ever.

Keir and Harrow Dane were both on the list. Their actors found Keir in Crane’s workshop by the red glass, with Enna, working on the Cerens, with Bram and Aster in their baskets. They asked about the other base, the one Keir and Dane held before they found us. The water tanks. The craft. The flight plan. The room Keir was locked in.

Keir answered everything. Dane, who still sits in the speaker’s chair at any table he sits at, answered the hard parts. When it came to the room, he did the answering, and Keir went out to check on the twins.

Ezra Holt’s actor was the oldest of them. A very old Aldri, nearly as old as Halvane, who’d played nine Aldri generals in his life and said he’d never once played a man who’d been saved by somebody’s father.

He asked Holt about the river.

Holt told him. On the porch, with his knees, which Halloway says are seventy-two and his heart, which is forty. About the black water. The girder across his leg. The bolts in the girder. Trevor Dask going in after him with a rope round his middle and no light, because he didn’t need a light, because he could see.

Mother was in the doorway. Listening.

When Holt finished, the old Aldri actor sat for a long time without saying anything. Then he turned round and looked at Mother. A long way down.

“Is anyone playing him?” he said. “The man with the rope?”

Nobody was. Trevor wasn’t on the list. Imre Oshan said he’d be in it, a bit, at the start, in the memories. But nobody had been cast.

The old actor looked at Mother for a long time.

“I’d like to ask Isar,” he said. “If you’ll let me. He’s the only one I’d trust with the rope.”

Mother didn’t say anything. She put the pot down. Then she sat down. Very suddenly. On the top step.

Holt put his hand on her shoulder.

“He’d laugh,” said Mother. In the end. Very quietly. “Trevor. If he knew. Being played by someone that handsome. He’d laugh till he fell over.”

“Is that a yes?” said the old actor.

“It’s a yes,” said Mother.

Isar Thenn wrote to her the next day. Through Imre. In our language, very carefully. A short note.

I’ll do my best with the rope. I know I’ll never see what he saw in the water. Nobody can. But I’ll go in anyway. I. T.

Mother keeps it in the drawer by the stove. With the teapot lid that broke, years ago, that she never threw away.

Edda Saye’s actress followed Edda round the long ward for a week and learned to deliver a baby, nearly, from a doll Halloway lent her. Nessa Ward’s actress walked the path from the eastern plain to the red glass every morning, because Nessa told her that was the path they came in on, the survivors, with Edda carrying the bundle and refusing to give it up.

Priya Lal’s actress learned to make the stew.

She spent nine days in the kitchen with Priya and Mother, and on the last day she made it, on her own, in a pot that Priya said had been a kit’s shell plate once, hammered into a bowl, and kept, all these years. And Priya tasted it. And her hands didn’t shake. They haven’t for years, not since the green. But Priya held them out anyway, flat, in front of her, and looked at them.

“Steady,” said Priya.

“Is it good?” said the actress.

“It’s better than mine,” said Priya. “Don’t tell anyone.”

The General’s actor was very grand. Very straight. Very old Aldri, the kind who plays the first Speaker. He followed General Windsor round the north field for a week and the General didn’t say a word to him the whole time, which Luna says is how her father says I respect you.

On the last day the General took him to the long table and showed him a stack of pictures. Old ones. From the bases, at the start. Hollows. Empty ones. He turned them over, one at a time. Then he turned the last one face down and squared the stack and put both his hands flat on it.

“That’s the part,” said the General. “Do that part right.”

The actor said he would.

Konrad and Ingrid Friese’s actors came together. Konrad’s followed Konrad to the archive where he keeps his lists, and asked him about the Senate, and about his son, big Sigmund, at seventeen, and about the day he finally saw through what the government had told him, and came.

Ingrid’s actress didn’t ask anything. She just sat with Ingrid, on the bench in the garden, in the sun. Ingrid walks now. She just walks and looks, and doesn’t say much.

On the last day, Ingrid’s actress asked her one thing.

“When you came,” she said. “Up the ramp. To your daughter. What did you feel?”

Ingrid thought about it for a long time.

“Late,” said Ingrid. “I felt late.” She looked across the garden at Risa, by the wall, with Kesh. “And then she held out her hand anyway. And I didn’t feel late any more.”

The queens were last.

Nobody can play a queen. Imre Oshan said so. She said they’d tried, in the first film, and it hadn’t worked, so they’d asked the dream-makers instead, the ones who made the battle, and the dream-makers had made the queens out of light, on the great wall, the way they make them in the dream room.

But for this one, the dream-makers said they’d need to know more. They’d need to know what a queen felt like on the first night. On the rim. What she thought. What she was afraid of.

So they asked.

The Scarecrow queen came up through the bed of the gardener’s cutting. Every evening, for nine evenings, at dusk. And the dream-maker sat on the garden wall with Dory, and asked. And the Scarecrow queen answered.

I didn’t listen. I went inside. I couldn’t.

Dory listened to all of it. Every evening.

On the ninth evening, she came in and sat down beside me on the bench at the long table and didn’t say anything for a long time.

“She told them about you,” said Dory. In the end.

“What about me?”

“About the rim,” said Dory. “The first dawn. She was there. Further back, with the rest of her young. Watching. She told them what she saw.”

I didn’t say anything.

“She said,” said Dory, very carefully, the way she says the queens’ words, not changing any of them, “she said: he was very young, and very frightened, and his face was wet, and his nose was bleeding, and he did not stop. And I thought: that is the most dangerous thing I have ever seen.”

A pause.

“And then she said,” said Dory, “and a few weeks later we learned to communicate, very slowly, and he came down into my hollow. My hollow was collapsing, I was badly injured and would likely have died without him. He fixed the walls, took out the piece of stone that impaled me and put me back together. And I thought: that is the bravest thing I have ever seen. And it is the same boy.”

I went down to the garden wall that night.

She was still there. Up through the bed, very still, in the dark. With her young asleep on her sides.

I didn’t say anything. I sat down on the wall. By Sefa’s terraces. And put my hand flat on the soil.

I told them, said the Scarecrow queen.

“I know.”

Are you angry?

“No,” I said. “You’re right. They should know both.” I looked at the dark. “I’m just tired of being the boy on the rim.”

You are not that boy, said the Scarecrow queen. You have not been that boy for a very long time. A pause. But he was you. And the children should see him. So that one day, when one of them is very young and very frightened on some rim, with someone telling them what’s coming over it, they remember.

“Remember what?”

That it is the same boy, said the Scarecrow queen. The one who doesn’t stop, and the one who comes down into the canyon with his hands open. That you can be the first one, and still become the second.

The other things. Quickly.

The actors went home at the end of the month. Through the Ister arch. All twenty. Every one of them stopped at the arch and turned round and looked back up the hill, the way Isar Thenn did. Tam Orrin, who’s playing me, asked if he could come back. To the dawn count. Just to stand at the back. Wren said he could.

He’s come back four times. He doesn’t say anything. He stands at the back with the actors’ slate and writes down what Wren writes.

The toymakers have heard about the prequel. Of course. They’ve asked if they can make the cadets. Soft ones. Young. In the training greys. Imre Oshan said they could, if they made Toby’s with a book under his arm, and Liam’s with his flask, and Luna’s with her chin up. She said if they got the chin wrong, Luna would know.

They’ve also asked to make a soft Teeming. A young one. For the courts. Dory asked the Scarecrow queen. The Scarecrow queen said yes. But she said it had to be one of hers. The small one at the back of her left side. The one who’s always forgotten.

Halvane says the long record has had a strange week. He says nineteen Aldri families have put down the same name for new daughters. He says the keepers had to ask what it meant.

It’s Juno. The meaning they wrote down is: one who came back from the quiet.

Juno hasn’t said anything about it. Miss Pell says she’s seen her, twice, standing outside the long record’s door on Ister, very still, with her arms folded. Not going in. Just standing there. Guarding it.

Sallow’s engine is a third built. Orra rows every morning.

Corvan hasn’t sent his word.

The stars said Not yet this morning. Two hundred and eighty-seven.

Days 9853–9895. Before.

Imre Oshan with a list: the filming’s done; Isar stood in the red-glass doorway nine hours and wouldn’t move, because I didn’t; now post, a year. And another: Before. The cadet days, the ship, the kit, the first nights, the bases, the Teeming. The list: Lucas Dask, Liam Calder, Seraphina Calder, Luna Windsor, Risa Friese, Sigmund Friese, Toby Marsh, Anja Bell, Wren, Juno Pell, Keir, Harrow Dane, Ezra Holt, Edda Saye, Nessa Ward, Priya Lal, General Alaric Windsor, Senator Konrad Friese, Ingrid Friese; and the queens. I took a week. Not the training floor: the rim. Article Five; hostile without exception; they came over the rim at night and bases fell; Wren went quiet, and Juno; and on the first dawn I turned them to salt until my nose bled; I’m not writing the number. They weren’t a swarm; they were young; the queens had been lied to by the same people; the Scarecrow queen had young on the rim that dawn. I asked for something made up, nobody’s monsters. The Scarecrow queen said no, the first time I’ve heard her say it: us. If you make us something from nowhere they’ll think only monsters do it, and that is how it happens again. Show them the rim, and the salt, and the canyon, and the courts; not so they’re frightened of us, so they’re frightened of the lie; let them cry in the dark with their mothers, safe. Mother: let her see what you did next; children always remember what you did next; you only ever talk about the river and the rope. Show the queens as mothers who’d been lied to, and me as a frightened boy who’d been lied to and had to learn; Imre: the first thing anyone’s asked for that I’d have done anyway. Twenty actors in grey. Tam Orrin, nineteen, from the dream-room line: were you frightened? Of big Sigmund, and of Luna; you still don’t know what to do about it. Liam’s actor and the flask: because Sera told me to; she went pink. Toby’s actress, fifteen: every night for the first forty-one; on the forty-second Liam sat on the bunk and Lucas on the floor and Risa, and nobody said anything all night; the best night of my life. Andraste’s actress waits for the third film. Risa told hers about her brother on the fence; big Sigmund: I was an idiot; you were; put that in; small Sigmund’s hand on his mother’s shoulder and his uncle’s. Bell’s actress checked her sums and was wrong twice. Wren: quiet, for a very long time; so now I count out loud, every name. Juno’s actress sat by every door for two weeks; Juno said one thing; Miss Pell: for not letting her go quiet for ever. Keir and Dane answered about the other base; Dane did the room. Holt told an old Aldri the river; is anyone playing the man with the rope? Mother sat down on the top step: he’d laugh till he fell over; yes. Isar: I’ll never see what he saw in the water, but I’ll go in anyway; in the drawer with the broken teapot lid. Edda’s actress and a doll; Nessa’s walked the path; Priya’s made the stew in the kit-plate pot; steady; better than mine, don’t tell anyone. The General turned the last picture face down: do that part right. Konrad’s archive; Ingrid walks, and Halloway has her on the page: I felt late, and then she held out her hand anyway. The queens from light, and nine evenings at the garden wall: he was very young and frightened and his nose was bleeding and he did not stop, the most dangerous thing; three days later he came down into the canyon with his hands open, the bravest; and it is the same boy. You can be the first one and still become the second. Tam Orrin stands at the back of the count. Soft cadets: Toby’s book, Liam’s flask, Luna’s chin. A soft young Teeming: the forgotten one. Nineteen Junos: one who came back from the quiet; Juno guarding the long record’s door. Sallow a third built. No word from Corvan. Two hundred and eighty-seven.