Chapter 165
The black acre under a starless grey sky. The fire is out. Smoke rises in thin threads. The farmhouse stands with its blue door, and the islanders sleep in their wet green corner. At the rim of the ash, the crew sits in silence round a small lantern.
alone in the middle of the ash, sitting cross-legged with her grandfather's hat in her lap. She's reading the names on her arm aloud, very quietly, one by one, the way she does every morning. It's not morning.
at the lantern, watching Öde.
standing up. He's not grinning.
walking out into the black acre. Ash puffs up round his boots. He kneels beside Öde, not too close.
side by side in the dark. Two Greeds.
and the world through them in Greed-sight: everything glowing by its value. The ash should be worthless, dull and grey. But it isn't. Every handful of it is burning gold: so bright he has to squint. Somebody values every grain of it more than anything in the world.
his breath catching.
Something under his ribs, under the green lightning, deep in the place where the commands live: a fourth door that's been shut since the storm that drowned him, opening.
startled, then very still, as he understands.
turning to look at him for the first time, confused, then, slowly, telling him.
listening with his whole face, nodding at every word. Then he puts both palms flat on the ash.
eyes shut, green lightning crawling down his arms into the black soil.
the word forming, quiet and absolute:
The whole black acre runs backwards. From Vigolas's two palms, outward in a widening ring of emerald light: ash lifts and un-burns into charred stubble, stubble into green shoots, shoots into tall gold barley, swaying, ripe, exactly as it was. Taller at the north end. A crooked furrow down the middle. The scarecrow stands back up out of a charcoal stick, and an old felt hat leaps off the ground and onto its head. The fence re-stands post by post. The thatch on the farmhouse roof un-singes, and moss creeps back over its north side.
In the middle, Öde on her knees with her mouth open, gold barley rising round her up to her shoulders, and a summer-sky blue coming into her eyes.
And Vigolas kneeling with his hands in the soil, lit green, smiling.
The islanders in their corner wake and stand up in wonder, barley to their waists. Drekk lets go of the wheel. Smurjan's three shadows all sit up at once. Mingus bounds through the barley in great leaps, sneezing at the pollen.
scrambling across the field to the fence, counting posts: one, two, three. She digs under the third post with her fingers, and comes up with a small white baby tooth.
at the rail of the Marka, eyes gold, smiling. Then his smile goes away. He looks at Vigolas.
still kneeling, waving it off. A gust comes across the Current and throws a spatter of sea-spray over the field and over his face. He licks his lips, the way a sailor does without thinking.
A beat. He licks his lips again. Nothing. He wipes spray off his cheek with a finger and tastes it, slowly, carefully.
Nothing. It's just water.
very quiet, staring at his wet fingertip.
at the wheel, who has heard. The old sailor goes still, then pulls off his bell-rope mask and looks at his captain, and doesn't say anything at all. A pirate who can't taste the sea.
standing up, brushing barley-pollen off his knees, grinning again, a little too wide.
standing in the gold, the tooth in her fist. She looks at the field. Then she looks down at her arm. The 111 emerald names. Still flickering. Still thin.
seeing that, his grin going.
catching his wrist. Gently. Firmly.
half-awake under a blanket on the deck, voice thick with sleep, explaining it the way he explains everything: too precisely, eyes still shut.
looking out over the remade field, tears on her face, not unhappy.
where the barley grows tallest. At the very rim, where the gold meets the water, a row of stalks is losing its colour. Gold to straw. Straw to grey. Like a painting left in the sun.
Beyond the rim, filling the whole horizon, flat and patient and paper-coloured: the grey edge, touching the field. Out in its haze, the faint outlines of Gleaner barges, waiting. And on the biggest one, a small bent figure in a coat of a hundred flags, sitting very still.