Chapter 169
The acre, gold, quiet. No grey on the horizon, just ordinary starlit Current to every side. The Marka at anchor beside the field, her sails loose. The seventy islanders working in the barley as if they'd been born to it.
at the rim, watching them.
behind them, awake, which is how everyone knows it matters. He has his book shut under one arm and the crown pushed back on his head like a hat.
turning.
very still. She looks down at the grass round her feet, then at the acre, then at her arms.
nodding past her, at the seventy islanders in the barley: a fisherman teaching a child to bind a sheaf; two old women arguing over where the fence should go; a boy sitting on top of the scarecrow, wearing Farfar's hat.
Öde walking out into the middle of the field. The islanders stop and look at her. They don't remember their own island's name. They've been here six days. They've never had anything else.
to the old fisherman from ch. 163.
holding his cap in both hands, eyes wet.
a long beat, then she smiles, crooked and wet.
sitting on the farmhouse step with her grandmother's scythe across her knees and a whetstone. Sharpening. Long strokes. Toward the edge, never away. Steady, practised, perfect.
sitting down beside her, watching her hands. He goes very quiet.
looking at her hands, not saying a word. Then he reaches into the lining of his midnight-green coat and opens one of the thirty-six sewn pockets. He slides a small folded slip of paper inside it. On it, in his scrawl: LONG STROKES. TOWARD THE EDGE. A BELL FOR HIS WIFE. COULDN'T SING. "WHAT'S A SMITH FOR."
buttoned shut. Beside it, other pockets bulge: the verdict cube, a cube with a ship in it, a cube with a whole hall inside.
standing, the scythe sharp, walking to the tallest barley at the north end. She takes one stroke, long and even, and cuts one sheaf. Gathers it. Binds it with baling twine from her braid.
sitting at Bonde's empty kennel, looking at it. Öde kneels beside him and prises the little carved name-board off its roof: BONDE.
(Mingus's tail thumps.)
The Marka's deck, transformed. Built along the rail, from salvaged Gleaner planks, is a long planter box full of good dark soil from the acre, with one sheaf of gold barley planted in its middle and already standing up green at the roots. The board BONDE is nailed to its end. Grass is spreading across the deck planks in a widening ring round the barefoot girl standing at the box with her scythe on her back, and Drekk is staring at it, appalled.
The crew round her: Kompis on the rail, Rougeina sitting on the box's edge, Smurjan and Kali hauling one last sack of soil, Bakasura's shadow sniffing the barley hopefully, Trollmage asleep in the grass, and Vigolas with his arms flung wide like he's just been given a present.
Mingus is curled up asleep in the planter box.
from Smurjan's shoulder, delighted.
holding out his hand to Öde.
The Marka weighing anchor. On the acre, seventy people stand at the rim of the field and wave, the boy on the scarecrow waving Farfar's hat over his head. The field gold in the last light.
at the stern rail, waving back. Then, quietly, turning to the crew.
at the stern rail in the dusk, saying the names together as the field gets smaller behind them. Öde first, the others half a word behind, already knowing many of them.
small and gold on the darkening water, its farmhouse window lit for the first time in years.
The acre far astern, a gold coin on dark water. And at its rim, where the grey once lay, standing on the water as if it were a floor: a man. Tall, a little stooped, gentle-looking, older, in a long grey coat. His face is kind and tired. And across his body, across his chest, his arms, his mouth, lie black bars, like the lines a censor draws through words.
He is looking at the field. At the farmhouse window. At the waving islanders. He looks almost fond.
at the stern rail, the names still on her lips, and her eyes on him. She sees him. Her hand tightens on the rail.
He does not turn. He doesn't see her looking. And in the next blink of the panel, the water at the rim is empty.
(No balloons on this page. No one else saw.)
turning away from the stern, saying nothing. She rolls down her sleeves. She walks to the planter box and sits beside the sleeping dog.
at the wheel beside Drekk, the Compass in his hand. The needle swings, wavers, and settles ahead.
The Marka under full sail through ordinary starlit Current. Grass has spread to the mainmast. The barley in the planter box is taller. Everyone asleep but Drekk at the wheel.
breathing out into the night air, and his breath comes out as a white cloud. He frowns. The cloud of his breath hangs in front of his face. And stays there. It doesn't drift. It doesn't fade. It just hangs, a small frozen ghost of a breath, perfectly still.
Ahead of the Marka, the sea freezes: not into ice, but into stillness. In a perfect circle miles across, every wave has stopped mid-crash, curled and glassy and white-capped, motionless, like a painting of a sea. Spray hangs in the air in frozen arcs. A gull hangs over it, wings spread, not moving. In the very centre of the circle, a small white island, quiet as snow.
all at the bow now, staring, their breath hanging in white clouds in front of their faces that don't go away. Mingus, in the bow, sneezes, and the sneeze hangs in the air too, a tiny frozen puff.