Chapter 366
from the night before, sitting peacefully on her thwart with her knife set neatly beside her. And a clay lamp held up to her face by a small hand, the white flame with no heat lighting her from below. Above her head, blooming like breath on glass, a soft painterly vignette: two little girls on a beach hauling their first net, fish flipping everywhere, both of them shrieking with laughter. Her face filling, the way a cup fills.
on her gunwale, its palm still lifted. And its faceless head turning away from the lamp, slowly, the way a person turns from a sight they can't bear. Stepping back over the rail into its longboat. Not hurrying. Just not looking.
standing in her lamp-boat, the lamp still up, seven emerald freckles glowing on her nose. The fishwife already reaching for her knife behind her.
turning to the black water between the hulls, lifting the lamp over her head as high as her arm will go, and calling, high and clear, a note the Lamp-bearers of Lumen have called across the dark Current for seven thousand years:
Out of the dark between the allied hulls, from every side, little boats: two hundred of them, rowed by children and grandmothers and old men, a white coat in every one, an unlit lamp at every bow. Converging on one small flame.
standing in her boat on tiptoe, touching the wick of her own lamp to Iskall's flame. The wick catching white.
And inside Iskall's flame, small, the one image it's made of: a freckled woman's hand closed round a small one, pressing a little thumb into wet grey clay. And a sliver of that image burning away, the way a wick burns down.
seeing it. His old face stricken.
Wick after wick touched to her flame: an old man's, a boy's, a girl's with a bandaged hand. fff-mm, fff-mm, fff-mm. And in her flame, the image of the hand on the clay shorter each time. A little less of the kitchen. A little less of the laughing face behind the hand.
bumping alongside: Vaka at the oars, a lantern-girl's coat, her own old ferry-lantern at her feet.
Vaka rowing hard between two dark hulls, four white flames on her thwart, standing to hand them up to reaching hands on a troll longship's rail, sitting, rowing on.
Lamp-boats reaching deck after deck across the fleet. A lamp held up. A joy blooming over a face. A hunter turning its head away.
The troll who sat down: over his head, a great stone king lying down in a cliff to become stone, opening one granite eye to wink at a little troll on the ledge. "…Dad." He stands. Picks up his axe.
The plateless grandmother, untying her raft: an island with a windmill and an orchard that isn't on any map any more. "…That's what I came for. So nobody else loses theirs." She ties the line back on.
The Gate City skipper: a man walking up out of the surf on black sand, reborn, into his arms. He lets go of the tiller he'd turned for home.
And at every lamp, a grey figure turning its face away, and stepping back, and back.
in a longboat, surrounded on three sides by lamp-boats, its faceless head turned down and aside, as if the light were too bright. Its palm, slowly, lowering.
A lamp-bearer boy of eight holding his lamp up to Njord's huge wet face. Above the old man: a bright dock on a summer lake, a red-bearded young fisherman hauling nets with two tall boys, all three of them laughing, a fish sliding down the younger boy's shirt.
A lamp-bearer girl holding a lamp up to a woman of charcoal on a stump. Above Aska: a long table on a burning branch, and at it, a place set with a bowl and a spoon and a slate that says ASKA. EAT FIRST. Her coal eyes going bright. A hoarse laugh, like a fire catching.
Iskall's own boat alongside. The lamp held up to Krydog, bleeding hands, no coat, on his knees on the deck. Above him: a raised ship in the dawn over a mud basin, eight rejects round it, and one of them pointing: "Him. He's still standing." He laughs, a bark of a laugh, wet. And inside Emma's ring, Tihi, the same light on her: a clown on the deck of a show-boat, juggling, making a face. Tihi's mouth twitching. And then the Giggle, out of her like a bird out of a box, rose light flashing on her cheeks, and the whole deck catching it, the eleven islanders, Roffe, Pyssel.
the lamp held up to him by a lamp-bearer grandfather. Above him: a golden dog pushing open a Nursery door to find a boy who wouldn't eat. Kompis staring at it. Then turning his head, slowly, down the silver road. His eyes gold: the thread from his chest running all the way down the road to the foot of the tree, taut and warm. And at the end of it, on the root, small and gold and still sitting.
The whole allied fleet at night from high above, a thousand hulls on black water, and at every bow and every masthead a small white flame with no heat. And over every deck, hanging in the dark like a second lantern, a soft painterly vignette: somebody's happiest moment. A sky full of them over the fleet: a first net, a stone father winking, a windmill, a man walking out of the surf, a dock with two boys, a place set at a table, a raised ship at dawn, a clown's face, a dog at a door, a hundred others, a thousand.
Between the hulls, little lamp-boats threading everywhere, children and old people at the oars. And the grey longboats backing away into the black between them, every faceless head turned aside, palms lowered. Overhead, Flyttfågeln's ten thousand birds wheeling, lit gold from below.
And at the centre, a small boat with an old man at the oars and a copper-braided girl standing in it, her lamp still held high, and her own flame now very, very small.
At the back of the fleet, the boats that turned for home turning back: sails coming about, oars dipping the other way, the fishwife's boat, the grandmother's raft, Gate City smacks. Coming home to the fleet. Hassel running back up the silver road ahead of them, waving both arms.
at the Upp Igen's rail, looking down at Iskall's boat.
grey before dawn. The last hunter on the rail, its face turned away from the lamp in Vaka's hand below it, stepping backward off the rail into the sea, and sinking without a ripple. All along the fleet, the grey longboats sliding back toward the Order's line in the dark.
a lamp-bearer child holding a lamp up to him because he's the only one on the deck who hasn't looked. Above him, his joy: the Marka's deck at night, everyone asleep round the fire, himself awake on the rail watching them. And round the fire now, more people than there have ever been: the Up-Again crew in their chalk rings, a swallow, a lantern-girl, a Herald, eleven islanders, a pickpocket asleep on a ledger.
the sky over the trunk going grey. Iskall sitting down very suddenly on the thwart, the lamp in her lap. Her flame tiny. And inside it, the image of her joy one heartbeat long now: a single picture, flickering. A hand. Clay. Gone. A hand. Clay. Gone.
looking up at Gammel-Ljus. And she looks older: a week, more. A little longer in the jaw. A braid an inch longer. Very tired.
Vaka's boat bumping alongside. Vaka climbing over into Iskall's boat. Kneeling in front of her on the wet boards. And taking the clay lamp out of the little girl's hands, gently, the way somebody once took a lantern out of hers.
lifting the lamp, and holding it up to Iskall's face.
lit by her own lamp in someone else's hand. And over her head, one heartbeat long, whole: a freckled woman's hand closed round hers, pressing her small thumb into the side of a soft clay lamp, and behind it, laughing, a face with seven freckles across the nose.
the image gone again, already, one beat. Tears on her freckles. Smiling.
wading across the lashed hulls in the grey light, his bandages black with blood, arriving at the rail above Iskall's boat. The little girl looking up at him.
(He climbs down and picks her up, lamp and all, as if she weighed nothing, and she's asleep on his shoulder before he's back on the deck.)
The allied fleet whole again, every boat that left come home, a white flame still burning at every bow in the grey light. The grey longboats gone back behind the line. The Order's sails, the black letters fading on them: GO HOME.
on the Upp Igen's masthead, switching her patch, turning her open eye east, away from the tree, away from the line.
Low over the eastern horizon, before the sun: a star. Not a fixed one. Falling. Amber, slow, much too slow for a falling star, and getting bigger.