Chapter 192: Given

[ You have entered the Fourth Layer. ] [ Blessing of the Fourth Layer: Given ] [ Curse of the Fourth Layer: Given ] [ What is given in love is received twice over. What is taken for oneself turns to ash. ]

Logan read it once, and then a second time.

He did not have time for a third. A sharp, crawling pain had begun in both his feet.

He looked down. The grey on his shins was cracking. Fine lines ran across it like the glaze on an old cup. Then it was coming away in pale dry flakes, like mud that has dried on a boot.

Underneath it was his skin. It was white and wrinkled, as if it had soaked in a bath until the water went cold, and it was his.

The feeling came back into his feet all at once. It was like a thousand needles.

Beside him, Alice made a sound halfway between a laugh and a curse and sat down hard on the warm stone. She did not let go of his hand to do it.

All down the line, the others were doing the same. Garen swore steadily through his teeth while the grey fell off his knees. Daniel stood perfectly still with his eyes shut and let it happen. Helen was crying.

Rishin did not sit down. He stood with his hand in Vina’s and looked at his bare feet as the stone flaked away from them, and his face crumpled and then smoothed out again. Logan had never seen it do that.

"It does not follow you down," the old man said. His voice was rough.

"The stair was still holding your legs when you crossed, so the grey stayed behind with it. That is the Third Layer’s. It keeps what it holds."

Vina had wriggled her toes once and stopped caring about them. She was looking at her wrist.

The grey line was still there. It had not cracked or faded. It lay across her skin exactly as before, thin as a thread.

"Mine stayed," she said.

"Nothing was holding your wrist." Rishin bent and looked at it. "It touched you once and let go. What is left is a scar, and a scar comes with you. Nessa told you it would always be cold."

Vina considered the line. Then she pulled her sleeve down over it.

"I do not mind," she said. "It is from when you got me back."

The light did not go out when Alice let go.

Logan stood in the passage with his hand empty and the pale gold lying over him from head to foot. It lay on Alice beside him, and on the rough rock walls, and on Billy’s rim where the wheel sat a pace away.

It did not come from anybody’s hands. It came from ahead of them, from the end of the passage, warm and steady and ordinary.

Alice held her empty hand up in front of her face and turned it over.

"I had forgotten," she said, "what it was like to see my fingers without holding yours."

Logan laughed. It came out cracked.

Behind them, the others were letting go one pair at a time. Garen let go of Isolde and then took her hand straight back again, because he wanted to.

Helen and Daniel stood with their hands apart, looking at each other in the plain light as if they had not seen each other standing apart since the arch.

The units came over the line into it.

Terry came first, with his chest plate hammered straight. Then Halden with Tinkerbell standing on his shoulder, and Solveig with his wings of light folded, and Martha and Winsmoke with their pots.

Pebble came with his sling over his shoulder, and Link with his torch, its small flame showing for the first time since the arch.

Hob came last, picking his way between the others with great care, and he walked straight to Daniel and put his head down on his chest.

Logan saw the chip in his horn for himself.

They walked down the passage toward its mouth on legs they could feel again.

The rock under them ran gently downhill, and the light grew warmer with every step. The air grew warmer too. It carried a smell Logan had not met since the garden at home. It took him a dozen steps to name it.

’Grass,’ he thought. ’Cut grass in the sun.’

At the mouth of the passage, they looked out.

The passage opened onto the side of a long, low hill. Below the hill, and on every side of it, there was more space than Logan had seen since the bowl of the Silver.

It was a cavern. He knew it was a cavern, because the roof of it was rock. But the rock was so high and so far away that it glowed, the way a high cloud glows after the sun is down.

The whole of it was the same warm gold. It cast no shadows, and it did not hurt to look at.

Under it lay fields.

They ran away from the foot of the hill in long pale strips of grain, gold and silver-green, rippling in a breeze that Logan could feel on his face.

Between the fields, there were orchards. He could see trees in rows, heavy with fruit. A river wound between them and flashed where the light caught it.

There were no walls. There were no statues. There was no dark.

Vina let go of the old man’s hand and ran halfway down the hill before anyone could stop her. Then she turned round, spread her arms out wide and spun in a circle in the grass.

Billy went after her. He spun too. Nobody told him not to.

Daniel reached the first orchard before the rest of them.

The trees stood in neat rows, and the fruit on them was round and pale yellow, the size of a fist. It smelled like honey.

Daniel stood under the nearest tree and looked up at it with his hands on his hips and his head on one side, the way a man looks at a job.

Then he reached up, picked one, and bit into it.

He spat it out at once.

It came out of his mouth as a puff of grey ash. The rest of the fruit in his hand had gone grey too. As he stared at it, it crumbled between his fingers and blew away on the warm breeze.

Daniel coughed. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and the back of his hand came away grey.

"Ash," he said. "It is ash. It was fruit when I picked it."

Helen came up beside him.

She looked at the grey on his lips. Then she reached up into the tree herself, picked a fruit, and held it out to him.

"Here," she said.

Daniel looked at it doubtfully. He took a bite.

He did not spit it out. He stood with the fruit in his hand and his mouth full. Then he chewed slowly and swallowed. Then he looked at his wife.

"It is the best thing I have ever eaten," he said. "Helen. It is twice the best thing I have ever eaten. I can feel it all the way down."

Helen laughed. Then she picked a second fruit and bit into it herself.

It went to ash in her mouth.

They worked it out standing in the orchard, spitting grey dust and laughing at each other, and then not laughing.

A fruit you picked for yourself was ash before it reached your stomach. A fruit somebody who loved you put into your hand was the best thing you had ever eaten, and it filled you twice over.

Water was the same. Alice proved it at the river. She drank from her cupped hands and choked on dust.

Logan knelt beside her and filled his hands and held them to her mouth, and she drank and drank and could not stop.

"Given," said Rishin. He was standing under a tree with Vina, who was eating a fruit he had picked for her and humming.

"It says so. What you are given is yours. What you take is not. I would have told you on the hill, but your father was faster."

Then he looked round at all of them. "Anything you swallow counts as food here. If you need a draught, hand it to each other."

Logan heard heavy footsteps in the grass behind him, and he turned round.

Martha was standing at the edge of the orchard with a bowl in her hands. She had filled it from her pot while they were busy with the trees.

She had carried it down the hill, and she was holding it out to him.

Logan bent his head to it while she held it.

It turned to ash before it touched his lips.

Martha looked down at the grey dust in the bowl. Her broad face did not change. She only stood there holding the empty bowl, and then she lowered it slowly to her side.

"Lord," she said. "I think they will not let me serve you here."

Logan put his hand on her arm and kept it there.

’She has fed us since the rim,’ he thought. ’She cooked for half of Clasp. And this place will not let her give us a mouthful, because she has never had a candle to give.’

Martha’s eyes stayed on the bowl, and he knew she had already counted it.

Alice had come up on her other side. She took the empty bowl out of Martha’s hands, very gently, and held it out toward the pot.

Martha filled it again without a word. Alice lifted it to Logan’s mouth, and he drank, and it stayed stew. It was the best thing Martha had ever made.

"Then you cook," said Alice, "and we will serve."

Martha looked at her. Then the set of her mouth eased, a very little.

"Yes, Lady," she said. "That I can do."

From the top of the hill, Sonic called down to them.

"Boss! There is a man out in the fields. Over by the river, past the third orchard."

Logan followed Sonic’s pointing arm.

He found him by the river. It was a man sitting alone at the edge of an orchard, with his back against a tree.

All around him, the branches hung low and heavy with pale yellow fruit. The grass at his feet was littered with it.

He was very thin. Even from that distance, Logan could see how his shirt hung off him like a sack.

He was sitting in the middle of more food than a whole village could eat, and he was starving.