Chapter 348

Kompis's boots leaving the lip. The hundred threads hauling him out over the drop, his fists sliding out of the gold fur, his back to the indigo light below. Krydog, sewn to his sleeve, going over the edge with him.

along the bottom border, almost flat. ba…… And from the right edge of the panel, gold light pouring in, and a sound like a bell struck under the sea.

Out of the gold, rising: a golden sabre-toothed lion the size of a cart horse. Shoulders like a hill, a mane of fire-gold, and two great fangs like ivory scimitars, each as long as a man's arm. The same warm retriever gold. The same kind brown eyes. Lunging over the lip of the wound and catching Kompis by the hood between the fangs, not a scratch on him, the way a dog once caught a sleepwalker off a yardarm. All four great paws braced on the grey scar, claws sinking in. Krydog dangling from Kompis's sewn sleeve. The hundred threads of white light snapping taut over the indigo.

hanging over the drop by his hood from a lion's jaws, looking straight up into enormous kind brown eyes.

her yellowed needle in her sewn fist, looking up at the lion. Not afraid. Astonished.

The Menders hauling: hundreds of them on the walls and lips of the wound, leaning back on the white threads like a team on a rope. The lion braced at the lip, the scar groaning under his claws, sliding one inch.

flicking at the lion from every side: at his flank, his paws, his jaw. Sliding off the gold like rain off a duck's back. Not one taking.

Vigolas, boots still sewn to the ledge, hauling at his own legs.

(He looks down. They have. He snorts, laughs, and the stitches pop.)

The crews piling on, the only way to haul when your hands pass through the enemy's rope: hold the lion.

Roffe, both huge arms round the lion's chest, heels dug in.

Smurjan's three shadows wrapping the lion's hind legs and anchoring them to the scar.

Bakasura, rising, holding the lion's tail very gently in his lips. "…Not eating." / Kali: "Good."

Rougeina, Swapping Menders off the thread-lines one per beat, never touching them.

Svala, a Flight-Line cutting the ridge under a dozen Menders' feet; they sit down hard on the scar.

Down Jeppson's freshly redrawn chalk stair from the ledge above, at a run: the eleven refugees. The young fisherman first, the grandmother second, the girl with the fishing-spear, the baker. Grabbing Roffe's apron strings, each other's belts, a human chain on the lion's side.

plateless, heels in the bark, teeth gritted, pulling for a dog he met a week ago.

Kali, bursting out of Smurjan's shadow, one-armed, grabbing a passing Mender by the wrist. Her eyes flashing silver. BORROWED: for sixty seconds a needle of light in her own fist. She makes a face like she's bitten a lemon.

(Then she sews twenty Menders' boots to the bark in a single furious running stitch.)

The front rank of Menders stuck fast, falling over each other, and behind them, hundreds more stepping up and taking the threads. The pull not slackening at all.

Krydog, dangling by his sewn sleeve under Kompis, bellowing up at the ridge.

(On a ridge, Flexsnus, tin out, leaning at an impossible angle, three taps on the lid.)

the lid open, a tiny emerald notch-icon flashing, and a new line scratching itself into the lid under the old one:

NULL, 1 NOTCH. DUE: ?

STITCH, 1 NOTCH. DUE: ?

Stalemate. The lion not giving an inch. The Menders not stopping. The threads humming like a harp-string drawn to breaking.

Kind. Brown. Steady. Not angry at anyone. And hanging from his jaws by the hood, Kompis, looking up into them.

panting, at Daniel's elbow on the chain.

letting go of the chain, the words coming fast for once, the way they came on the examination block.

picking a white thread off his clean grey coat. Brushing the coat down. Touching the breast pocket where the certificate is folded into eighths. Walking out along the lip, past the hauling Menders, to stand in front of them on the edge of the wound.

raising his right palm at the black square letters running down the lips.

The stay. Everything that the sentence was making happen stops: the seam's stitches frozen mid-pull all down the wound; a hundred needles hanging in the air like nails in amber; the threads going slack; the hauling Menders tumbling backward onto their seats as the pull vanishes out of their hands; the lion staggering back from the lip with Kompis swinging safe from his jaws. A paper-white line across Daniel's raised palm, and from it, a hairline of white light, drawn taut, to the nearest black letter.

sitting up on the scar, her yellowed needle frozen in her fist: she pushes it toward the wound and it won't go.

A balance of pale light drawing itself in the air over the wound: in one pan, the black square words, heavy, THIS WOUND IS FINISHED; in the other, small, in plain clerk's capitals: DANIEL. Swaying.

on the ledge, looking up at it.

The one fixed point on the page, drawn in exactly the same place as the panel before, while everything round it moves: the lion pacing, the Menders getting up, the strips fluttering.

speaking to the whole wound, quiet, precise, every word set down like a cup on a table.

his hand beginning, very slightly, to ache.

(Silence in the wound. Menders, crews, refugees looking at one another. Nobody alive was there.)

On the sand-gold rim at the top of the world, tiny against the dark, a hooded mountain on a stone bench. And his two enormous grey hands, slowly, rising.