Mother Skrap

• Build & height: 1.40 m, tiny, bird-thin, bent like a question mark (ch. 163). Salvaged, she is four times the height of a man, built out of what she's wearing.
• Face: small, sharp, deeply lined, almost tender when she smiles at something dying. In ch. 168 it "breaks open": she doesn't cry, "she just looks very, very old."
• Hair: grey rope, wound up and stuck through with a church weathervane, a copper rooster, for a crown (ch. 163). Salvaged, the rooster creaks round "in a wind that isn't there".
• Eyes: one milky; the other bright and hungry as a gull's.
• Clothing, layer by layer: a shapeless grey shift · a coat sewn from a hundred flags, faded to a hundred greys, dragging behind her like a bridal train · house-keys on strings round her neck, dozens of them, to doors that no longer exist · rings on every finger, none of them hers. Sewn over her heart: one small flag, blue and white, not faded (Lövholm).
• Signature item: the coat of a hundred flags, and the one bright flag under her burned hand.
• Movement: small, slow, shuffling; she sits down on the edge of a fight "like an old woman on a doorstep" and waits. Salvaged, every step tilts the ground. 164).
• Voice: "a voice like a rusty hinge" (ch. 163), endearments for everything she's about to strip: "dear", "dears", "little harvest". Balloons are ragged-edged, like old flag-cloth, and when the bell in her ribs booms, the balloon rings with it (DONNNNG).
• Variant looks: On the throne (ch. 160: a figure on a throne of salvage at the back of the fleet, watching). SALVAGE (ch. 163 splash: bell in her ribs, mill-wheel on her back, hillside stones locked over her shoulders, coat billowing like a storm cloud). Grey cloak (ch. 166: wearing the dying grey barley and the softening fence posts). Burned (ch. 167–168: one hand wrapped in rags, pressed over the bright flag).

She takes whatever a dying thing still holds, and wears it. (Saga IV beats; ch. 163)

• Worn, not kept. When the salvage drains, she shrinks back and the borrowed things fall off her (ch. 164).
• The grey is her cover. She salvages the greying rim of Värn's field and comes out of the grey wearing it; inside the grey, Greed-sight, thread-sight and the Swap find nothing (ch. 166), and the crew must fight by heartbeat.
• What it can't do: take anything alive ("You're not dying yet."); take a gift: she tried to salvage Old Järn, the memory Öde chose to give up, and it burned her hand ("I'm not dying, woman. I'm given. There's a difference.", ch. 167). Take Mingus: "…Now there's a thing that'll never die. Pity." (ch. 164) Take what's loved: the Null itself can't eat what's loved (ch. 166, 168), and neither can she. Take what the Null has already finished: an uncounted thing simply isn't, and there's nothing left to wear.
• SFX: the salvage flowing in: a soft hhhhff, like a last breath; the bell in her ribs DONNNNG; the mill-wheel krrk… krrk; a gift burning her FSSHH.

• Tempo: 350.
• Home tempo: the grey rim, where everything around her is dying and everything is hers to wear.
• Heartbeat technique: THE LAST GIFT. Inside one heartbeat (the instant a thing gives up) she catches what it was still holding: a mast's fall, a barge's sinking fury, an island's last colour. Not after, not before; in the beat of the letting-go. No one else's power lives in the last beat of something else.

She can only love what's dying. Anything alive is worthless to her. (Saga IV beats) Kompis sees it: she has no threads to anyone alive. Not one. Every thread runs down, into her coat, into a hundred faded flags; and one, the oldest and thickest, runs to the single small flag over her heart, the only one not faded (ch. 163). It is the only thing she holds that isn't dying (ch. 168).

• Gifts. A memory given away out of love isn't dying; salvaging it burns her (ch. 167).
• Love. The field holds at the grey's edge because Öde remembers it (ch. 166), and the grey pulls back: "It can't eat what's loved. So it goes looking for what isn't." (ch. 168)
• Fighting by heartbeat in the grey: Shared Beat tied to Mingus's heartbeat lets the crew find her when nothing else can (ch. 166). Smurjan's Triple Pulse into the grey cloak ("…Rude.").
• Remembrance. Öde's hour of Värn: 111 remembered villagers fighting beside the crew (ch. 167); Old Järn and Vigolas swing together and snap the raft-fleet's central chain.
• Her own flag. "Whose flag is that?" (Öde)
• How she was beaten (ch. 167–168): burned by a gift, her fleet broken apart, she came back for one small thing ("I only wanted the hat, little harvest. Something off the acre. Just to have."), and Öde asked her what her island was called. "…Lövholm. It was called Lövholm. There were birches. My mother kept bees." Öde wrote it on her arm in place-ink. "…Somebody else has it now." She rowed away from the grey for the first time. Not redeemed, not killed: loosened.

• The coat of a hundred flags: one for every dead island she has stripped; one, bright, that she didn't.
• The house-keys to doors that no longer exist; the borrowed rings (blackened by Järn's fire).
• The throne-barge: "a throne of salvage on its deck".
• The Gleaners (GLEANER · K-II MARKED · scavengers of dead islands): a raft-fleet of lashed barges, hooks, torches, salt-sleds' worth of scavenging gear; "Where to, Mother?"

Wait, then wear. She lets her Gleaners strip and burn, sits down at the edge and watches, and strikes only when something is falling, so she can catch its fall. She fights from the grey where she can't be seen, wearing whatever is dying round her. She never finishes a fight that the world will finish for her: "I'll be back when it's dying again, little harvest. It won't be long. It's coming for you anyway." (ch. 164)

• Wants: to hold something, safely, for as long as it lasts. Since Lövholm, only the dying are safe to love: they can't leave you, they're already going.
• Fears: loving something alive again.
• Contradictions: a scavenger who calls the things she strips "dear"; a queen of dead islands with one living flag over her heart; she can say "Everything does" about fading, and couldn't say her own island's name for sixty years.
• Humour: dry, grandmotherly, cruel: "Oh, you've been collecting. How sweet." / "…Oh. Oh, now it's lovely." (watching the field burn)
• Habits: arranges her coat when she sits; pats dying things ("There, there"); collects keys.
• Alone: fingers the blue-and-white flag and doesn't say its name.

• Öde: "little harvest"; the girl she meant to strip, who wrote LÖVHOLM in place-ink beside FJÄLLMÅ, and so kept it for her.
• Vigolas: "You're not dying yet. …I'll wait." He punched her first and felt bad about it ("…Okay, I feel bad about—").
• Old Järn: the gift that burned her hand.
• Mingus: the Manticore on the farmhouse roof; the one thing that will never die. "Pity."
• Kompis: saw her threads, and the one that's still alive.
• Smurjan: the Triple Pulse in the grey; her bell threw him across a field.
• Bonde: chased her last barge off the scarecrow (ch. 168).
• The Null: her hunting ground and her rival; she races it to every dying island.
• The Fjällmå survivors (about seventy): the people she would have let fade.

• "…Take the soil. Leave the girl. She'll die soon enough, and then she's mine."
• "Hello again, little harvest. You've got visitors." (ch. 163)
• "Everything falling has a gift in it, dears. Nobody ever asks for it but me." (ch. 163)
• "I only love what's dying, pirate. Bells nobody will ring. Ships going down. Islands at the edge. You're not dying yet. …I'll wait." (ch. 163)
• "…Now there's a thing that'll never die. Pity." (ch. 164)
• "…Oh, look at you. You're dying, old man. Come to Mother." (ch. 167)
• "…Lövholm. It was called Lövholm. There were birches. My mother kept bees." (ch. 168)