Chapter 162
Öde stands at the rim of her acre where barley meets grey water, reading the names on her arm aloud, softly, one by one. Grass springs around her boots. Behind her the crew wakes on the stubble: Vigolas sprawled on his back, Mingus asleep in the empty kennel.
sitting up, listening. He mouths the names after her, silently, trying to learn them.
stopping at the gap near her wrist. Her thumb rubs the bare skin. She skips it, the way you skip a stair that isn't there.
slinging the scythe on her back, nodding toward the grey horizon.
The Marka with the crew aboard, Öde in the bow, sailing out from the acre toward the grey. The Kettle's bell at the bow is strangely quiet. Drekk taps it; it gives only a dull tunk.
Here the starlight sea simply stops being. There's no wall, no storm, no shoreline: the stars thin, the water greys, and then there's a soft, flat, endless nothing, the colour of old paper, stretching up and out forever.
eyes gold, wincing as if staring at the sun.
Drifting toward the grey, slowly, as if on a current it can't fight: an island. A small green world, a village on a hillside, a mill, a church, washing on the lines. People in the streets, pointing at the grey, running.
very still in the bow.
Chains. From the grey haze on the far side of Fjällmå, the Gleaner fleet, patched barges, hooks out, already circling the island like gulls round a dying whale.
at the bow, eyes going hard.
Two races at once.
The Gleaners swarm Fjällmå's harbour, ripping out door-frames, prising up cobbles, cutting down church bells.
The crew lands at the quay and runs the other way, into the streets, pulling people toward the Marka.
Vigolas punches lightning through a Gleaner's hook-chain, freeing a fishing boat full of children, and shoves it toward the Marka.
Smurjan, the Triple Pulse: one beat, three Gleaners off a roof, and an old man caught in his other arm.
Kompis with Lilla Ulv, bouncing shots round a corner to cut a looting-net, letting a family fall free.
Öde, Scythe-Sweep, a long even stroke mowing a whole line of Gleaners off a pier, then grabbing a girl by the wrist and running.
And behind all of it, the grey has arrived. The far side of Fjällmå is touching the Null.
This is the rule.
1. Colour. A red barn goes grey, as if painted over in ash. Then the grass. Then a woman's blue scarf.
2. Shape. The barn softens, its corners blurring like a drawing being rubbed out.
3. The count. A man standing in the grey street, mid-shout, mid-step, is gone. Not dead. Not falling. Just not.
4. Beside where he stood, a woman stops calling his name, frowns, and looks around, puzzled, as if she has forgotten why she was shouting.
frozen on a rooftop, a child under one arm, staring at the woman who forgot.
running past below, not looking.
Fjällmå, half eaten. On the right, a green island in full colour, people running, Gleaner barges at its harbour, the Marka at the quay with the crew hauling people aboard. On the left, the same island fading: grey houses, soft-edged streets, a church spire rubbing out against the paper-coloured sky, and figures in the streets, some of them already half gone, mid-stride. Down the middle, the line where the colour stops, moving, slowly, like a tide coming in.
In the centre, small, Vigolas carrying two old fishermen at once over the line of colour, the grey licking at his heels.
Vigolas tries to hit it. Of course he does. Full lightning, straight into the grey edge.
The lightning goes in, and doesn't come out. No flash. No sound. No impact. The light simply isn't anymore.
staring at his empty fist.
The last of the people the crew could reach pile onto the Marka's deck: sixty, seventy, crying, coughing. Mingus runs among them, licking faces.
The Gleaner barges cast off from the dying harbour, loaded with bells, beams and cobbles, laughing.
at the rail, looking back at the half-grey streets. People are still there. Too far. Too late.
Fjällmå slides entirely into the grey: the church goes, then the mill, then the hill. Then there's nothing where an island was. The water closes over the place in the Current like it was never there.
on the Marka's deck, one of the saved, pulling at Rougeina's sleeve.
(She can't remember. Nobody aboard can remember the island's name.)
kneeling with the girl, very pale. Her hand goes to her heart, where the dead she carries are, every one of them with a name.
sitting down beside her on the deck, without asking.
(A long silent beat between the two women. Neither says anything else. Neither needs to.)
The Current at the edge. Where Fjällmå was, the grey is smooth and blank. And slowly, slowly, like a tide turning, the line of the grey edge bends, curving round toward a tiny golden speck far off in the dark.
standing at the stern, staring back at the bending edge. Her knuckles white on the scythe.