Chapter 267

One gap where yesterday there was a shard. On the bark beside it, laid out neatly, the shard, and next to it a tiny pile of splinter-shavings like a signature.

her face in it, sulky.

Barkstrippers coming over the roots again, more of them, nail-guns up. And the crew already moving, without being told, into a ring round the shipwright and his heaps: Emma at the centre chalking her own circle round Jeppson, everyone else facing out.

The crews fighting for the builder:

Kompis firing Lilla Ulv's wolf-cub ricochet off three roots to bonk three nail-guns out of three hands.

Smurjan's shadow pulling a stripper back by the ankle a foot from the nearest heap.

Isa, a beat late, catching a falling mallet in the air by not moving, and Tihi taking it out of the frozen moment and running off with it, giggling.

Jeppson, in the middle of it, tapping a shard home. tik. Not looking up.

cornered against the hull, yanking a chalk stick out of Jeppson's open box and throwing it at him: "DRAW something, then! Go on! Build yourself a wall!"

picking the stripper up by the apron and dropping him off the shelf into the root forest.

Jeppson lying under the Marka with his right eye shut, sighting along her spine. Drekk lying on his back beside him, sighting along it too, both of them in the same pose, glaring at the same plank.

and Flisa in it, delighted, looking from one to the other.

brushing bark-dust off the keel near the stem where the old hair-off-true plank begins. And under the dust, cut deep and square into the wood: a troll-mason's mark. A little hammer under a crooked crown.

going completely still, his hand flat on the mark.

taking his hand off the mark slowly, as if it might be hot. Putting his plane down. Not picking it up again.

in the knot, very quiet for once, listening to two men not argue.

flat on his back on the bark-shelf under the star, hat over his face, napping, as he has been for six days straight. Flisa sitting on his chest, staring down at the hat.

lifting the hat an inch, one eye open.

kneeling in her little ship's garden on the beached Marka's deck, pressing acorns into the soil, cork-oak acorns from the bark-shelf floor. Flisa watching from the rail, arms folded.

A big raid: strippers in the dark with hooded lanterns and nail-guns, coming up the root from three sides at once. Both crews meeting them in the dark, no chalk walls, no chalk stairs, nothing but hands and guns and lightning and a ring of people round one man and a lantern.

Krydog in front of the heaps taking a nail-gun spike in the shoulder, going down, and getting up (ba-dum, ba-DUM, a thin silver ring flashing round each iris, twice), healed of it, and Rising Fist into the shooter.

at the keel, tapping a shard home in the lantern-light while the fight roars round his circle. tik. Hands steady. Face wet.

No gap. No shard on the bark. No shavings. For the first time in ten mornings, she took nothing.

passing, stopping, his eyes going gold, looking at the half-whole ship. In his sight, every glint in the rebuilt hull pulled tight, like a thousand bowstrings drawn at once.

sitting high on a root above the shelf, alone, Kvist in her lap, her knot-eyes on the ship.

looking up at her with yellow eyes. Flisa scratching her ears.

Every crew member on the shelf, still, watching. Jeppson at the stem, holding the last shard in both hands. Krydog behind him with a hand flat on his back, holding him up.

fitting the last piece of bark into the last hole in the Marka's keel. Perfect. Every edge meeting its edge. One tap of the mallet.

The Marka, whole. Beached on her bark-shelf under the fixed star, her keel sealed stem to stern, nine hundred and forty pieces of her own broken bark back in the order they came out. Not one sliver new. Not one sliver off the tree.

And the crews roaring: Vigolas on the rail, Tihi cartwheeling, Roffe crying into his ladle, Svala doing loops round the mast.

walking slowly to his ship and laying both hands on her hull, his forehead against her, eyes shut.

sliding down the keel to sit in the bark-dust, his legs gone, his hands curled and raw. Krydog sitting down next to him.

padding up and lying down across the shipwright's feet like a warm rug.

The newly whole Marka floated back off the shelf into a root-harbour, moored. Everyone asleep on deck. Below, in the dark hold, the new keel. A knot in it.

And Flisa stepping out of the knot, very slowly, into the dark.

standing in the middle of the hold, her hand flat on the new keel, exactly like Jeppson's. Her eyes closed, for once, or almost: her knot-eyes dark. Listening.

In both hulls, in every plank, every rib, every one of the Upp Igen's eleven thousand fallen-bark scraps, every gold glint lighting at once, thousands and thousands of tiny lights, like two ships full of stars.