Chapter 88 When You Come

Isolde found the first ripe bean while Dinraal was trying to persuade the garden gate to stop squeaking.

She stood very still beside the bed.

Then she called his name.

He looked up immediately.

“What is it?”

“Come here.”

The silver had already begun moving over his wrist before he saw her expression.

She was smiling.

Dinraal looked down at the bright edge creeping across his hand.

Then back at his wife.

She raised an eyebrow.

“It’s a vegetable.”

“I can see that now.”

“I thought we might manage without armour.”

He withdrew the silver and crossed the garden.

Isolde held the bean between two fingers as carefully as though it were something borrowed.

It was slightly curved, a little shorter than she had expected, and entirely unremarkable to anyone who had not spent weeks inspecting the plants for signs of damage.

Dinraal understood why she was smiling.

“You grew it.”

“We grew it.”

“I mostly carried things.”

“You carried them very well.”

He bent closer.

There were more beneath the leaves.

Not many yet.

Enough.

Beyond the low wall, someone was walking toward the school with a child who had apparently decided that every stone along the road required examination. Farther off, the relay building’s window caught the morning light.

Hearth was beginning another day.

No one had called them.

Nothing needed to leave orbit.

Isolde turned the bean in her fingers.

“I think I’d like to teach someone how to do this.”

Dinraal looked at her.

“Grow beans?”

“Grow things. Start with something small enough that it doesn’t matter if they get it wrong.”

He glanced at the bed.

“Did we get it wrong?”

“Several times.”

“Should we mention that?”

“First lesson.”

She smiled at him.

He looked at the bean again.

Then he touched her wrist gently.

“Yes,” he said. “I think you should.”

At the relay room, Enna was examining a picture of a storm.

Dinraal had not expected that.

He had expected the usual morning exchange, perhaps another construction drawing or a note about the release mechanisms.

Instead, a small thunderstorm appeared to be travelling around the roller coaster on Avalon.

Asha stood beside the display with an expression of professional delight.

Enna looked less delighted.

“Is the weather following the car?”

“Yes,” Asha said.

“Deliberately?”

“We haven’t been told.”

Dinraal leaned closer.

The image was blurred in places. Lights streaked across the background. At the front of the train, lightning illuminated a small cloud directly above two passengers.

He recognized Risa.

He recognized Lucas beside her.

Both appeared to have their mouths open.

Isolde laughed.

“They went.”

“Apparently several times,” Eve said.

Enna folded her arms.

“How many?”

“The note says twelve.”

For a moment, Enna said nothing.

Then she reached for the relevant drawings.

Asha sighed.

“They were enjoying themselves.”

“I am pleased.”

“You don’t look pleased.”

“I am discovering that our expected operating conditions were incomplete.”

Dinraal looked back at the storm.

He could imagine the conversation at the top of the first climb.

He could not imagine what it felt like to be one of the people standing below when thunder began moving around the track.

“Is Keir concerned?”

“He has sent no request for changes.”

“Then perhaps it worked.”

Enna turned toward him.

“It did work. I would like it to continue working.”

She began a note asking about weather protection around the control assemblies.

At the bottom, after some consideration, she added:

Glad they enjoyed it.

Dinraal watched her write.

“Will you send that part too?”

Enna gave him a flat look.

“Yes.”

Then she looked at the picture again.

The corner of her mouth moved.

Only slightly.

The news about Genny arrived on the fourth evening.

It came in a drawing.

A great wheel against the stars.

Little painted rooms suspended around it.

At the top, one room glowed red.

Beneath the picture, Garnet had written a note.

Then another note.

The second had been crossed out and written again.

Eve enlarged it.

Isolde read it first.

“Oh.”

Dinraal looked at her.

“What?”

She smiled.

“Callum asked Genny to marry him.”

Rhiannon, who had been arranging a basket on the table, stopped.

The room became attentive in a way that made Dinraal instinctively look for an escape route.

“And Rowan asked Garnet,” Isolde continued.

Rhiannon put the basket down very carefully.

“Both?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“The same evening.”

Tiamat stepped into the room just in time to hear that.

She looked at Rhiannon.

Rhiannon looked at her.

Dinraal closed his eyes.

“No.”

Neither woman acknowledged him.

“We could send congratulations,” Tiamat said.

“Of course,” Rhiannon replied.

“And perhaps—”

“No,” Dinraal repeated.

Isolde touched his arm.

“They haven’t said anything.”

“They’re about to.”

Rhiannon turned toward him.

“We organized one perfectly lovely wedding, and now you behave as though we threaten the institution.”

“You turned a small cake into an engineering project.”

“It survived.”

“That wasn’t the concern.”

Eve made a sound that she disguised as a cough.

The next message supplied more of the story.

On Callum’s world, the gift was something one would least wish to lose.

He had offered Genny his left hand.

The hand he had nearly lost.

The hand that had been restored.

The hand she had once helped him use.

Rhiannon’s expression changed.

Tiamat sat down beside her.

Dinraal looked at Isolde.

She was turning her ring slowly on her finger.

He remembered Aramaeis holding the little box.

His own unsteady hands.

Isolde telling him this was important.

Across the table, Rhiannon reached for paper.

This time, she wrote only congratulations.

By morning, there was more news.

Brock and Saska.

A wedding on the north field.

At dawn.

In the spring.

Dinraal read the message twice, then looked toward Gilgamesh, who had arrived carrying a crate of replacement fasteners for the workshop.

“Your friend is getting married.”

Gilgamesh set the crate down.

“Which friend?”

“The one you haven’t met yet.”

He understood at once.

“Brock?”

Dinraal nodded.

Gilgamesh smiled with immediate, uncomplicated pleasure.

“Good.”

There was an account of the roller coaster.

Brock turning to iron at the top.

Keir, at the bottom, realizing what that meant for the load.

Saska laughing all the way around.

Enna read that part.

Then she sat down.

Nobody spoke to her for several seconds.

Eventually she said, “I would like everyone to stop discovering new weights while already on the track.”

Eve transmitted a question about the figures.

Keir’s reply included enough numbers to settle the engineering concern and a short explanation that suggested he had already had a very long evening.

Enna studied it.

Then she wrote back that his sums were sound.

After a pause, she added:

Next time, ask before he gets in.

Gilgamesh was still reading the wedding message.

“I wonder what they eat at weddings.”

Rhiannon looked up sharply.

Dinraal pointed at him.

“You have done this.”

“I asked a question.”

“You asked it within her hearing.”

Isolde was laughing again.

The sound moved through the room easily.

Asha leaned back in her chair.

Eve let the next nonurgent report wait.

For a few minutes, nobody discussed towers, casualties, or stars.

They discussed weddings.

Who would stand where.

Whether dawn was an admirable choice or an unreasonable one.

Whether there would be music.

What it meant to offer someone a hand and trust them to understand.

Isolde took her gardening idea to Nessa after lunch.

Dinraal went with her because she had asked him to carry a box.

He had learned not to assume that being invited meant being required to solve something.

The box held packets of seeds, a few small tools, and several containers that had once belonged in a ship’s galley.

Nessa inspected the contents.

“Lessons?”

“If people want them,” Isolde said.

“For the children?”

“For anyone.”

Nessa looked up.

Isolde rested her hands on the edge of the box.

“I’ve been thinking about the people who don’t come to the field.”

“There are several.”

“And the people who come because someone else asked them to.”

Nessa nodded slowly.

“Some might prefer doing something quieter.”

“Something with a purpose they can understand?”

“Yes. But it doesn’t have to become another duty.”

Dinraal looked at his wife.

She had thought about this longer than he realized.

“Just a pot,” she continued. “Something they can keep by a window. Or a little space in a shared bed if they want more.”

Nessa picked up a seed packet.

“Would you run it?”

Isolde hesitated.

It was a small hesitation.

Dinraal noticed because he knew the difference between uncertainty about a plan and uncertainty about being allowed to want it.

“Yes,” she said.

Then, more firmly, “I would.”

Nessa smiled.

“Then we’ll put up a notice.”

“Nothing grand.”

“Nobody here would ever become carried away with a modest event.”

Both women looked toward Dinraal.

He raised his hands.

“I have behaved very reasonably.”

“That’s why you’re carrying the box,” Isolde said.

They found a place for the supplies near the school’s rear door.

Then Nessa gave Isolde a sheet of paper.

“Write what you want people to know.”

Dinraal stood beside the window while his wife sat down.

He watched her begin.

The notice attracted eleven people.

Isolde had prepared for six.

She looked at the gathering.

Then at the little box.

Then at Dinraal.

He stood.

“I’ll find more containers.”

She smiled gratefully.

By the time he returned, the lesson had already changed shape.

One woman knew considerably more about growing food than Isolde did, but had not touched soil since leaving her home.

Two children were most interested in worms.

An older man wanted to know whether the plants could be left alone for several days because he was afraid of becoming responsible for something he could fail.

Teren stood near the back.

He had come carrying a cracked cup.

“I wasn’t certain this would do.”

Isolde took it.

“It might need a drainage hole.”

“I can make one.”

“Then it will do.”

Dinraal placed the extra containers on the table.

Isolde thanked him and continued.

She showed the group the first beans from their garden.

Explained what had gone wrong.

The overwatering.

The shade they had failed to account for.

The damage from a small creature nobody had conclusively identified, though Mira had accused three species and Gilgamesh.

The children liked that part.

The older man looked relieved.

When Isolde asked what people hoped to grow, the woman with experience said a word none of them recognized.

Then she stopped.

“They won’t have it here.”

“Tell me about it,” Isolde said.

The woman looked down at the soil.

“Broad leaves. Bitter if you pick them too late. My sister used to put them in soup and pretend it was a recipe rather than what we had.”

Nessa, passing the doorway, stopped to listen.

Isolde did not reach for her notebook.

Not yet.

First she asked what the plant needed.

Then she asked whether the woman would help them look through the seed stores for something similar.

By the end of the lesson, three people had volunteered to return the following week.

Teren left with soil in his repaired cup.

That afternoon, a picture arrived of a chessboard.

The pieces occupied positions that made no sense to Dinraal.

He turned the page.

There were no further instructions.

Asha came to look over his shoulder.

“Is this a puzzle?”

“It may be evidence of an accident.”

Eve read the accompanying account.

Konrad had been teaching Corin.

Corin had invented his own moves.

Konrad had accepted them.

The game had continued for an hour.

At its conclusion, Konrad had acknowledged defeat.

Dinraal looked at the picture again.

A king stood beside a knight in the middle of the board.

He thought of the child’s hand against the arch.

Then of a small hand moving a piece simply because that was where he wanted it to go.

“Good,” he said.

Asha looked at him.

“What is?”

“He’s playing.”

Eve smiled.

They pinned the picture beside the others.

Not among the engineering drawings.

Not beside the accounts from the ring.

Near the school’s picture of the river.

Aramaeis saw it later.

He studied the arrangement with considerable seriousness.

Dinraal waited.

Finally, his uncle said, “I believe I would lose.”

“You haven’t heard the rules.”

“I suspect that would not help.”

The next morning, Aramaeis brought a board to the field.

By midday, three children had developed a game involving the pieces, a wooden bridge, and a rule requiring one of the kings to remain inside the ship.

Julius attempted to understand it.

He left with a headache.

Aramaeis stayed.

Dinraal watched from the path as his uncle moved a piece according to instructions that changed halfway through the movement.

He remembered the military records laid across the same hands.

Lists of the dead.

Corrections made long after they should have been unnecessary.

Now Aramaeis was listening to a child explain why a horse needed to cross a river before the tower could move.

He listened with exactly the same care.

Dinraal went on without interrupting.

The invitation began as a practical question.

Isolde was considering whether to move the table outside for the next gardening lesson.

Their kitchen could hold a few people.

The garden could hold more.

But the gate opened inward, the path narrowed beside the bed, and the First Weapon regarded the warmest patch of stone as a permanent appointment.

“We could move that bench,” Dinraal said.

“Where?”

“Beside the wall.”

“That’s where the watering cans are.”

“I could build a shelf.”

“You have offered to build four things since breakfast.”

“Have I?”

“Yes.”

He looked around.

A shelf would help.

So would moving the bench.

So would a wider path, though widening it meant disturbing the edge of the bed Isolde had worked so carefully to establish.

His mind began fitting the changes together.

Then she touched his wrist.

“Dinraal.”

He stopped.

“I like our garden.”

“So do I.”

“You’re planning a receiving station.”

He glanced at the gate.

Then the path.

Then the space beside the wall.

Perhaps he was.

“I want people to be comfortable.”

“They will be.”

“What if—”

“We can move a chair when someone arrives.”

He looked at her.

She was not laughing at him.

That made it easier to hear.

“We don’t have to know every person who might come before we make room for one.”

Dinraal let out a breath.

The silver settled against his skin.

“All right.”

She kissed his cheek.

“Thank you.”

They moved the bench.

That was all.

Later, while he carried the watering cans to the other side of the garden, Isolde said, almost casually, “I would like Lucas to see this.”

Dinraal looked up.

She was touching a leaf damaged by the creature they still had not identified.

“And the others.”

He set the cans down.

“So would I.”

Neither added the obvious difficulties.

They knew them.

For that moment, they let the wish stand.

Tiamat found him on the ridge above the lower terrace the following evening.

He had gone there after a routine patrol report.

Nothing in it required his attention.

No suspicious contacts.

No change around the outer stations.

No pressure in the silver.

The report had been uneventful enough that he ought to have put it down and continued home.

Instead, he had climbed until he could see the town.

Tiamat came to stand beside him.

“Looking for something?”

“No.”

She waited.

Dinraal sighed.

“Checking.”

“What?”

He considered lying.

“The distance.”

“Between what?”

“Things.”

She looked out over the houses.

The relay building.

The school.

The clinic.

The paths where people were beginning to return home.

“The distance from the clinic to the landing ground?” she asked.

He did not answer.

“The distance from the school to the nearest shelter?”

He looked at her.

Tiamat nodded.

“I thought so.”

“It’s useful to know.”

“Yes.”

She folded her arms.

“I know it too.”

The words were quiet.

Dinraal looked back toward the town.

“And Alexander,” she continued. “And Arcturus. And the people whose names are on the watch schedule. We have spent a great deal of time learning.”

“I trust you.”

“I know.”

She turned toward him.

“But sometimes you behave as though trusting us means believing we will help you do everyone’s job.”

That stung.

He opened his mouth.

Closed it.

Tiamat’s expression softened.

“You helped make this place possible. You’re allowed to live in it.”

He rubbed a hand over his face.

“I was going home.”

“You can still do that.”

Below them, lights were appearing in windows.

One by one.

Not a signal.

Not a warning.

People making it easier to see their supper.

Dinraal stood beside her for another moment.

Then he nodded toward the path.

“Will you walk with me?”

“Of course.”

They went down together.

At the turning toward his house, Tiamat squeezed his arm.

“Isolde saved you something.”

“What?”

“She refused to tell me.”

“That seems ominous.”

“It smelled very good.”

He laughed.

Then he went home.

The news from Avalon became smaller over the next few days.

Dinraal found himself grateful for that.

A bicycle.

A child asleep in a sling.

A green ribbon tied to handlebars.

A message that Hana was enjoying the long road around the new place.

He did not know everything the ride had meant to her.

He did not need to.

In the picture, she looked as though she had discovered something she intended to keep.

Isolde studied it beside him.

“I’m getting better at ours.”

“You were already better than I was.”

“That is a low standard.”

“I thought you liked encouraging me.”

“I do. Keep looking forward.”

They sent a picture of Hearth’s bicycle leaning against the shelter.

Beren had corrected the seat.

Enna had approved the brake.

Several people had learned to ride it.

Nobody had yet admitted responsibility for the scrape on the frame.

Then came a note about Lucas returning a borrowed blade.

Kyria’s first.

Dinraal read the short account of the morning’s exchange.

Lucas had lost his practice bout with Andraste very quickly.

There appeared to be disagreement about whether it had taken three breaths or four.

Kyria had given him the blade to keep.

Aramaeis smiled when he heard.

“What?” Dinraal asked.

“Nothing.”

“That is not a convincing answer.”

His uncle folded the paper.

“I was thinking that he must trust her very much.”

“Andraste?”

“Yes.”

Dinraal considered the man who could ask walls to change their shape, holding an ordinary blade and accepting that someone else knew more than he did.

“Yes,” he said. “He must.”

They did not receive an account of the rest of the night.

Nobody asked for one.

There were parts of a life people could share freely, and parts that remained theirs.

The connection felt stronger for allowing both.

Isolde’s second gardening lesson moved into their garden.

Nine people came.

Two brought friends.

Teren brought his cup to show that something green had appeared.

The older man who had worried about leaving his plant alone had arranged with a neighbour to check it.

He described the arrangement with the satisfaction of someone who had solved a problem he once believed made the whole undertaking impossible.

Dinraal carried chairs.

Then he stopped carrying chairs because Isolde told him there were enough.

The First Weapon took the open space beside the gate.

Everyone stepped around him.

After the third person apologized to him for doing so, Dinraal considered moving him.

Isolde shook her head.

“He was here first.”

“He is occupying the entire entrance.”

“He’s being consistent.”

The lesson wandered.

Soil.

Water.

What could be planted together.

Which plants needed more light than the kitchen windows received.

The woman who remembered bitter leaves began explaining a way of supporting climbing stems with scraps of cloth.

Isolde listened.

Asked her to demonstrate.

Soon everyone was watching her hands.

Dinraal stood beside the wall with a cup and realized his wife had moved away from the centre without losing any part of what she wanted.

She had wanted people to grow things.

Now someone else was teaching them.

She looked delighted.

When the lesson ended, several people stayed.

Not because they needed further instruction.

They talked.

Teren asked the older man about his neighbour.

The woman with the cloth strips told Isolde another story about her sister.

One of the children found a beetle and began a lengthy negotiation about whether it should remain in the bed.

Dinraal fetched more cups.

This time, Isolde did not stop him.

By the time everyone left, the garden contained three forgotten tools, a borrowed chair nobody could identify, and a small collection of stones arranged for a purpose neither of them understood.

Isolde looked around.

Then she smiled.

“That went well.”

Dinraal put his arm around her.

“Yes,” he said. “It did.”

The picture from Avalon arrived after dark.

Dot sent it slowly.

One portion at a time.

Garnet had drawn the whole place from the top of the wheel.

The lamps appeared first.

Small warm marks among the trees.

Then the paths.

The water.

The swings reaching over the lake.

The roller coaster rising out of the Kethri trees.

The sand hill.

The wind tower.

The long road around it all, with bicycles so small they were barely more than strokes.

Dinraal stood very still.

He had seen drawings of the individual structures.

He had read the calculations.

He had watched Enna spend an entire night ensuring the cars could return without anyone carrying the passengers down.

But he had not seen it like this.

A place.

Large enough to become part of people’s memories.

Specific enough that a child might one day say, The path near the boats, and someone else would know exactly where they meant.

Isolde came to stand beside him.

Eve let the picture finish before opening the accompanying message.

The words arrived in the old dictionary.

Slowly.

You asked about our gardens.

Then:

This is one.

Isolde pressed her lips together.

Dinraal looked at her.

She was smiling.

Her eyes were bright.

He remembered her asking about the gardens after the relay had returned.

After the years they had missed on Avalon.

After the folded drawing of the bird’s nest had come back beside the story of Dory’s first shoes.

She had asked for something ordinary.

A way to begin knowing their friends again.

Now an entire landscape glowed on the wall.

Beside the display, a smaller picture showed the porch.

Ribbons.

Different colours.

A dark blue one in Dorothy’s hair.

The explanation was brief.

Lucas had won another.

It had taken nineteen tries.

His father had once taken twenty-three.

Dinraal laughed softly.

Then his throat tightened.

Isolde reached for his hand.

He let the two feelings stay together.

They went home to draw their garden.

Dinraal suggested a photograph.

Isolde agreed.

Then looked at the first attempt.

“No.”

“What’s wrong?”

“You can’t see the road.”

He moved.

The second showed the road but lost most of the beds.

The third contained an excellent view of the First Weapon and very little else.

Dinraal lowered the device.

“He knows.”

“He’s lying down.”

“He has selected his position deliberately.”

“I think he likes that stone.”

They tried from the kitchen window.

From beside the gate.

From the wall.

Eventually Isolde took out her notebook.

“I’ll draw it.”

Dinraal looked at the page.

“Are you certain?”

“No. But I can include the things I want them to see.”

She sat at the table while he made something warm to drink.

The drawing began with the beds.

Rows of green.

The low wall.

The gate, which she drew slightly straighter than it actually was.

Beyond it, the road continued toward the field.

The relay building stood farther away, its window a little square of light.

She shifted the perspective enough to fit everything together.

Dinraal watched the page become a place he knew.

Then she added the First Weapon.

At the edge.

Head on his paws.

Occupying exactly the space where anyone trying to enter would have needed to stand.

“That is accurate,” Dinraal said.

She smiled without looking up.

The drawing was small.

The lines were not as sure as Garnet’s.

One corner of the wall had been rubbed out and corrected.

Isolde held it at arm’s length.

“Do you think it’s enough?”

Dinraal looked at the beds.

The gate.

The house just beyond the edge of the page, implied by the angle from which she had drawn.

Their life, seen from a chair at their own table.

“Yes.”

She set the notebook down.

“What should we say?”

He began to offer something about the beans.

Stopped.

Isolde was looking toward the dark window.

Then she picked up her pen.

Aurelius arrived while they were still deciding how to send it.

He brought a folded cloth Rhiannon said they had left behind somewhere.

Neither remembered doing so.

Both accepted it because arguing would accomplish nothing.

The older man saw the drawing on the table.

“For Avalon?”

Isolde nodded.

He bent closer.

“That’s lovely.”

“It’s smaller than theirs.”

“So are most places.”

She laughed.

Dinraal poured him a cup.

Aurelius sat while they explained the picture of the park and the message Dot had sent.

He listened without interrupting.

Then he looked at the garden drawing again.

“What are you writing beneath it?”

Isolde touched the edge of the paper.

“I’d like to show them.”

“The drawing?”

“The garden.”

Aurelius looked up.

For a moment, none of them spoke.

The route remained unsolved.

They had a reference they could maintain.

A channel through which words and pictures travelled.

They did not have a way to bring a person safely from one world to the other.

Dinraal knew every difficulty well enough that they had begun to feel permanent.

Isolde knew them too.

She turned the page toward Aurelius.

At the bottom, she had written three words.

When you come.

He read them.

Then he sat back.

“Yes,” he said.

Dinraal looked at him.

“Just like that?”

“What else is required for an invitation?”

“A way to accept it.”

“That can come later.”

Dinraal turned his cup between his hands.

He had become very good at attaching conditions to things he wanted.

If the route could be found.

If the timing could be understood.

If the enemy allowed it.

If enough people survived long enough to make the rest possible.

Isolde’s hand rested beside the words.

She had left the conditions off the page.

Aurelius looked from one of them to the other.

“You are inviting friends into your garden,” he said. “You don’t have to solve the journey before you tell them they’re welcome.”

Dinraal let out a breath.

Then he smiled.

“No,” he said. “I suppose we don’t.”

They brought the picture to the relay room before the hour.

Eve was there.

So was Asha, who had been attempting to reduce a long question about the common reference to something that could be answered without requiring an entire day.

She looked up as they entered.

“Is that the reply?”

Isolde nodded.

Asha came to see.

“The First Weapon is in the way.”

“Yes,” Dinraal said.

“He’s in the way here too.”

“Yes.”

Asha considered this.

“Then it’s a useful reference.”

Enna, working at the far table, made a quiet sound of agreement.

Eve prepared the image.

One line at a time.

They watched their garden begin appearing in the transmission field.

The green rows.

The low stone wall.

The gate.

The road beyond.

The field.

The building with its window.

The great dark shape occupying the entrance.

Dinraal imagined the same lines forming on the other world.

Lucas on a porch.

Dot nearby.

Perhaps someone leaning over to look.

Perhaps Dorothy still wearing the ribbon he had tried nineteen times to win.

He did not know exactly where they were.

For once, that uncertainty did not trouble him.

Eve looked toward them.

“The words?”

Dinraal glanced at Isolde.

She nodded.

He gave them slowly, leaving room for the old dictionary.

Ours.

Then:

Isolde says: it’s smaller than yours.

Asha smiled.

Eve continued.

Isolde says: she’d still like to show you.

Dinraal felt his wife’s fingers close around his.

He looked at the little garden on the display.

The path he had wanted to widen.

The bench they had moved.

The plants that had survived their mistakes.

Then he said the last part.

Isolde says: when you come.

Eve entered it exactly.

At the hour, Hearth sent the pulse.

Then the picture.

Then the words.

Nobody added a qualification.

They walked home slowly.

There was no reason to hurry.

At the field, someone had left the wooden ship’s cloth flag tied too tightly. It hung in a stiff little fold instead of moving with the breeze.

Dinraal noticed.

He kept walking.

Isolde looked at him.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“That was an appreciative expression.”

“Yes.”

He smiled.

They passed the school.

A light remained on near the rear door, where the gardening supplies were stacked.

Through the window, he could see the notice Isolde had written.

Another lesson next week.

Below it, in a different hand, someone had added that spare containers were welcome.

Then someone else had written that they needed holes in the bottom.

Then a child had drawn a plant considerably larger than the school.

The town was beginning to make its own additions to what she had started.

Dinraal pointed.

Isolde stopped to look.

Her face softened.

When they reached their gate, the First Weapon was waiting.

In the entrance.

Exactly where she had drawn him.

Dinraal looked down.

“You understand that people use this.”

The First Weapon lifted his head.

Then put it down again.

Isolde stepped carefully around him.

Dinraal followed.

Inside the garden, the air smelled of damp earth.

One of the chairs from the lesson still stood beside the wall.

Neither had found out who owned it.

Isolde sat.

Dinraal took the chair beside her.

Across the road, beyond the field, the relay room’s window glowed.

Somewhere much farther away, a picture of this small place was reaching people who had shown them their own.

Dinraal rested his hand on the table.

Isolde laid hers over it.

“What are you thinking?” she asked.

He looked toward the empty chair.

There was soil on one leg.

A small split in the wood near the back.

It would need attention eventually.

“Where we’ll put everyone.”

Isolde laughed softly.

“Not tonight.”

“No,” he agreed.

He turned his hand beneath hers.

“Not tonight.”

They stayed outside until the light in the relay room changed for the next watch, talking about beans, borrowed chairs, and which part of the garden they would show their friends first.