Chapter 298
The Kindler curled on the grey ash, shaking, frost on his lashes. The crews and the Everlasting standing round him. And coming up the hill, swaying, grey, his apron singed, his stomach growling, carried the last few steps by Bakasura's jaws and then set down gently: Roffe.
looking down at the freezing man for a long beat.
beside him, low.
turning to the crowd on the hill: crews, Everlasting, the last of the pilgrims, booming as if it were any other dinner.
An old pilgrim widower holding out half an onion from his coat pocket. "For the dill she didn't have."
The thin young acolyte, a heel of the flour-bread he baked, still in his robe.
Karin's widower, a twist of salt.
Öde, three ears of Värn barley from the last of her planter-box.
Svala, a fish she was saving.
The old Everlasting woman who knelt at the pyre, unwrapping, from under her robe, a little pot of honey she's kept hidden for years. "The High Flame said sweetness was impure."
And Mingus, trotting up and dropping, at the cook's feet, very carefully, the last strip of Njord's salt-cod, which he has been carrying in his cheek since Tidekant.
filling a small battered pot with all of it: onion, salt, barley, fish, bread, honey. Not much. Enough for one.
setting the pot over the nearest glowing crack in the branch at the foot of the cold pyre. The Burn's fire licking up round it.
on the ash, his half-shut eyes finding the crack. The fire. Crawling toward it, a shaking hand reaching for the flame itself.
The crown of the Burn at nightfall: the cold grey pyre behind, the red-gold sky of Helios above, light arriving before its lamps. And at the pyre's foot, on the black branch, a table: Jeppson's last chalk-table, shaky-lined, crooked, a hair off true and standing. Round it, sitting down together on benches and stones and upturned pots: two crews, a dozen Everlasting in white robes with their soot halos half washed off, the last pilgrims, Kvar at the end with his birch-green scarf, Aska at the head in Roffe's galley chair.
And in the middle of the bench, wrapped in Roffe's own apron, shaking, a gaunt man in a ragged showman's coat, a steaming bowl being set down in front of him by a cook the size of a mountain.
staring at the bowl. At the steam. His hands shaking too hard to lift the spoon.
sitting down beside him on the bench, very carefully so as not to rock the table, taking the spoon out of his shaking fingers, and feeding him. One spoonful. Like a child. Like a boy in a Nursery who wouldn't eat.
(No balloon.)
swallowing. Hot soup. Onion, barley, honey, salt-cod. His eyes closing. And a warm amber glow lighting, faint, in his chest, under the rags, where a furnace used to roar.
on his lashes, melting. One drop. Two. Running down his face like tears, or tears running down like melt.
taking the spoon himself now, hands still shaking, eating. Everyone round the table eating too, sharing out the little there is, a mouthful each from bowls passed hand to hand, the amber steam rising off them and drifting together over the table like one great tablecloth.
eyes gold, watching the Kindler's thread: thin, fraying, and steadying. Not thick. Not healed. But holding.
at the bottom of his bowl, looking up at the cook. His scarred white lips moving.
a huge hand on his shoulder.
at the head of the table, watching them. Speaking up, hoarse.
looking down the branch at the pilgrims' cooking-fires, the kitchen's cold stoves, the long line that will come again tomorrow.
The Everlasting at the table, one by one, getting up and laying their white-hot chains, cold now, on the grey ash of the pyre. The old woman first. The thin acolyte. A soot halo rubbed off a face with a sleeve.
at the far end of the table, a bowl in front of him. A real one, hot. And for the first time on the Burn, eating. Slowly. Every spoonful.
in Roffe's galley chair at the head of the table. Someone has set a bowl in front of her. Roffe, standing behind her chair.
picking up the spoon. And this time not hesitating. Eating. Leaning back in the chair. Her eyes closing. Her cracks, deep as they are, glowing warm, not pained. Not counting. Letting herself have it.
(No number in the corner.)
The whole table at the foot of the cold pyre, under the red-gold sky, eating together in the warm amber steam: two crews, a dozen ex-Everlasting, pilgrims, a tired man with a new scarf, a woman of charcoal with her eyes shut, a gaunt fire-eater in a cook's apron, and a dog asleep on a warm footprint. And one huge cook standing, the only one not eating, his stomach growling, looking down the table at all of them with his small warm brown eyes.
The table emptied, everyone asleep on the branch in heaps, Ivo curled up by the warmest crack with Roffe's apron over him, sleeping, steam rising off his lips a little less than before. Kvar sitting up on a ridge with his spade across his knees, awake, but not keeping watch: just looking at the stars.
getting up, shouldering his spade. Walking down the branch toward the sea in the dark. Stopping at the end of the line of sleeping crews. Looking back once.
(He goes. Things in his path move aside. Behind him, nobody stands.)
Aska on her stump at the top of the empty line, cooling, quiet, her cracks still deep but glowing steady. Roffe sitting on the ground beside her with his back against the stump, too tired to get up.
nodding at her hip, at the small clay jar that hangs there on a cord, sealed, plain, empty.
her cracked hand closing round the empty jar.
looking up into the red-gold sky of Helios, where light comes before its lamp, where her fire was burning before there was ever a spark.