Chapter 178
Isa's mother standing at the lake's edge where she has stood for eleven years, still holding her one long note. The whale's song is over; her harmony goes on alone.
Her slow smile is finished at last: wide and warm, made over three days. And now her lips have begun, very slowly, to shape a word.
standing in front of her mother, barefoot, the clock-face at her throat, the little brass-and-ice cube on a new cord beside it.
waiting for the word. It will take a long time. She waits the way only she can: perfectly still, without impatience.
Öde in the whalebone town, planting a row of barley seed in the snow outside every door. It sprouts green through the frost.
Smurjan carrying water up the hill for the Still Folk, three shadows carrying three buckets.
Kali, from his shadow, trying to get the skipping child to finish one sentence. "Say something! Anything!" (Ten panels later, the child:) "…Some…"
Rougeina on the town wall, unable to bear the slowness, pacing back and forth, back and forth.
Trollmage asleep in a snowdrift, blissful. "Best island in the Current."
Tövind, old, on a bench outside the clock-tower, wrapped in a whale-hide blanket, watching snow hang in the air, doing nothing for the first time in his life. He looks almost peaceful.
beside Isa at the lake, fidgeting wildly, then forcing himself to stand still next to her. He lasts about four seconds.
sitting at Isa's feet, perfectly patient, staring up at her mother along with her. He is very good at waiting for someone.
finishing the word at last, an hour later. Soft, slow, whole:
her face crumpling, then steadying. She steps forward and puts her arms round her mother, who is too slow to hug her back in time. Isa stays, holding on, until her mother's arms close round her, slowly, a minute later.
The crew gathered at the water's edge. Behind them on the hill, the whole town of Still Folk has come down to the shore, one step a minute, starting at dawn, to say goodbye. They're halfway there. They wave, very slowly.
turning to the crew. Small and plain and terrified.
very seriously, hand on his heart.
and for the first time in the series, the corner of her mouth goes up. Not a laugh. Not yet. A beat late, the beginning of something.
linking her arm through Isa's.
the third one rumbling, huge jaws nudging the small girl.
The crew walking out across the frozen waves toward the rim, Isa with them, barefoot on the glass sea, her mantle's icicles chiming with every step. Breath-clouds hanging behind them in a long trail. The island getting smaller behind. The Still Folk, at last, reaching the beach, and waving.
at the very rim of the still circle, stopping, one foot raised over the line where the frozen sea becomes moving sea. She looks back once.
Then she steps over.
The instant she crosses the line, her heart lurches, ba-DUM, and then beats again, too soon, ba-dum, and again, ba-dum, at the world's speed. She clutches her chest, startled.
which has hung frozen mid-flicker since we met her, finishing at last, as if the board can finally catch up with her now that she's moving through time:
ISA · K-IV SHAPED (re-assigned) · Scalelist #1,212
The Marka at anchor just outside the still circle, and she has changed. Öde's planter box has run riot: grass covers the entire deck and has climbed the mainmast; the barley stands tall and has been harvested, sheaves stacked by the rail; a little bench has been built by the wheel; a whole row of tally-marks is scratched into the rail, dozens of them. Sitting on the bench with a long grey beard, a bucket of mended nets at his feet, the Kettle's bell polished to a mirror shine, is Drekk.
He stands up very slowly as the crew climbs aboard, staring at them, at their fresh faces, at their two-day-old bruises.
aghast, looking from Drekk's beard to the tally-marks.
pulling Vigolas into a crushing hug, then shoving him away, furious and relieved.
eyes gold, at the rail, looking out at the open Current, his face going serious. Everything has lurched forward: threads he knew moved, changed, some gone.
handing Vigolas a fat, waterlogged stack of pamphlets and broadsheets, tied with twine, collected from every passing trader for four months.
as Vigolas flicks through them:
THE NULL TAKES THREE ISLANDS IN THE SHALLOWS: "THE HORIZON IS CLOSER," SAY SAILORS
COUNCIL OF FOUR DECLARES THE MARKA A FUGITIVE VESSEL. SCALELIST BOUNTY POSTED.
CODEX-BEARERS VANISHING IN THE NORTH: "NOBODY REMEMBERS WHO WAS TAKEN"
THE SEERS' GUILD INVITES ALL: "COME AND SEE HOW YOU DIE"
folded inside: a rough woodcut of Vigolas's grinning face, and under it the board's number, with a new column beside it.
VIGOLAS · ∞−1 · Off the List · BOUNTY: ONE CHAIR
standing on the grassy deck, barefoot, listening to everyone talk at once, very fast. She closes her eyes. Then she lies down flat on the deck, her ear pressed to the planks.
The Marka under sail at last, away from the still circle, which shrinks behind her to a white coin on the sea: an island where a girl's mother is still waving, one wave an hour.
Ahead of the Marka, out of a flat, dark sea, rises a pillar. Stone. Taller than any mast, taller than any tower, its top lost in mist. And from base to tip it is carved with names: thousands and thousands of them, in every hand, in every script, some deep and old, some freshly cut. Faint silver light glows in the grooves.
At the pillar's base, on a ledge of black rock, stands a very tall, very thin woman, still as a heron in shallow water, in layered mourning-grey, a mantle of cypress bark over her shoulders. A blindfold of black-green thread covers her eyes. Her ash-white hair falls in dozens of thin braids, each tied with a tiny lead tag. She is already facing the Marka, a beat before it comes out of the dark.
Ögar.