Chapter 194: The Willow Door

"I heard, boss." Pebble’s voice came back at once. "I am already coming."

He came through the grain at a run with his sling wound round his fist. The grey lock at his temple stood out against the sandy hair, and Logan’s eyes went to it before he could stop them.

Pebble stopped beside him and looked at the man under the tree. Then he looked across the river at the amber point under the willows.

"I heard what the old man told you above the Silver, boss," he said. "Unless somebody is dying."

"I know."

"Then it will be my days." Pebble said it simply, the way he would have said it was his turn to carry the pots. "I have thirteen years. He does not have one."

Rishin did not let them go straight away.

"You choose it out here," he said. "The same as before."

"We do not know what is on the shelves," said Logan. "Last time, I had seen the stone in Tarry before I went in for it."

"Then you do not ask for a thing. You ask for what he needs, in as few words as you can. You take the first thing it shows you, and you walk out."

"And if it shows us a thing we cannot pay for?"

"Then you walk out with nothing and come and tell me." Rishin’s eyes went to the far bank. "It will not do that. It wants you to come back."

Logan thought about it.

"A way to keep him alive on this layer," he said. "Nothing else."

"Not quite." Alice had been frowning at the river. "Whatever keeps Oswin alive until he leaves the Fourth Layer. Say his name and say where it ends. Give it nothing it can bend."

Rishin looked at her for a beat longer than he looked at most people.

"Yes," he said. "That."

The three of them crossed the river where Billy found the shallows.

The water was cool and so clear that Logan could see his boots on the stones at every step. It came up to his thighs in the middle and pushed gently at him, and it smelled of nothing at all.

He kept his mouth shut the whole way. Beside him, Alice noticed and laughed.

"Do not swallow any," she said. "It will only be dust."

"I am not opening my mouth until I am out of it."

"You just did."

The door stood in the bank itself, among the roots of the biggest willow.

It was black wood, plain and old. An amber lantern hung from an iron hook beside it, exactly as one had hung in Tarry and on the shelf above the Silver. Its flame did not move, although the willow branches stirred all around it.

Logan stopped in front of it with Alice on his left and Pebble on his right. The door swung inward before any of them had touched it.

The same warm air came out, with the same smell of beeswax and dust. The counter of black wood stood where it always stood, with its two shallow hollows side by side and the worn step in front of it.

The shelves ran back under their chains of lanterns. Logan put his eyes on the counter and kept them there.

The door closed behind them without a sound.

"Whatever keeps Oswin alive until he leaves the Fourth Layer," Logan said aloud. "Nothing else."

The lanterns answered him.

All down the first aisle they dimmed together, as if a wind had gone through the shop that none of them could feel. Only one stayed bright. It hung halfway down, over a bell on the left-hand shelf.

"It knows exactly what he needs," Alice said softly. "And it has been waiting for someone to ask."

They walked down the aisle to it.

Alice kept her eyes on the bright lantern ahead. All the same, she saw the shape of the bells as she went past them, glass after glass on the dark shelves.

One of them held two rings on a cushion, plain bands of the kind people married with. Her eyes slid toward it, and she pulled them back.

’One thing,’ she told herself. ’We chose it outside.’

Under the bright lantern, on a square of cloth, there was a heel of dark bread.

It was the end of a loaf, the hard crust that somebody saves for last. It was about the size of Logan’s palm, and one corner had been torn away by hand.

The panel opened.

[ Wayfarer’s Crust ] [ One use. The eater is fed as though by one who loves him, until he leaves the Fourth Layer. ] [ Price: 3,200 Abyss Points ]

Logan read it twice.

"That is cheap," said Alice.

"It is." Logan frowned at the panel. "The stone cost forty thousand. This keeps a man alive, and it costs a hundred of Pebble’s days."

"The stone was for a child who would be with us all the way down," said Pebble. "This is for one layer. Maybe it charges by how far."

’Or maybe it wants us to learn that saving a stranger is cheap,’ Logan thought. ’So that we come back and do it again.’

He did not say it. The lantern burned steadily over the bread.

Pebble stepped up onto the worn step and set his right hand in the second hollow.

[ Offered: Longroad Cairn Slinger (Pebble) ] [ Rank: Mythic ] [ Rate: 32 Abyss Points per day ] [ Available: 4,934 days ]

This time the number did not blur, and the lanterns did not go out.

Logan found that he had been bracing for it. He made his hand let go of his sword hilt.

[ Exchange: 100 days (Pebble) → 3,200 Abyss Points ] [ Purchased: Wayfarer’s Crust ] [ Pebble: Lifespan 4,834 days ]

Logan watched his face again.

A single hair beside the grey lock went white. It was only one, and Logan would not have seen it if he had not been looking for it.

Pebble lifted his hand from the counter and turned it over.

"That was a small one, boss," he said. "Like taking a stone out of the pack, not the pack off."

The crust lay in the first hollow. Logan picked it up. It was hard and dry and a little warm, and it smelled of an oven.

The door opened at the first touch of his palm.

On the Second Layer, it had held against him as though it had been built into the rock. Now it swung away from his hand like any door in any house.

Logan stood in the doorway with the willow branches brushing his face.

’It has decided what we are,’ he thought. ’We are the kind who come back.’

He did not like how easy it had been. He went out anyway, and Alice and Pebble came after him.

He carried the crust back across the river above his head.

Oswin was awake when they reached the tree. Vina was sitting in the grass beside him, telling him about Billy in a low voice, and he was listening with his eyes half shut.

She saw what was in Logan’s hand and stopped talking.

Logan crouched down and held the crust out to her.

"You give it to him," he said.

Vina did not take it. She looked at the grey dust still caught in the man’s beard, and then at her palm.

"It will go to ash again," she whispered.

"Not this one. Pebble paid for this one."

She took it. She held it in both hands as if it might break, and she held it out to Oswin.

He took it from her very carefully. Then he bit into it.

It did not turn to ash.

He chewed, and his jaw worked slowly because it had forgotten how. He swallowed, and his eyes closed.

Logan watched the color come into his face. It came up from his throat into his cheeks, the way warmth comes into a cold room when the fire catches. The tremor in his thin hands stopped.

Oswin took a second bite, and then a third. He ate the whole crust down to the last crumb with his eyes shut, and when it was gone, he put his hand over his mouth and kept it there.

Tears were running down into his beard.

"It is bread," he said through his fingers. "It is only bread. Somebody’s mother made it."

Vina put her hand on his knee and left it there.

"Who paid for it?" Oswin asked, when he could speak.

Logan nodded at Pebble.

Oswin looked up at the young man standing in the grass, at the grey lock and the single white hair beside it. He looked for long enough that Pebble began to shift his feet.

"I cannot pay you back," Oswin said.

"Nobody asked you to, sir."

Garen had been watching all of it with his arms folded. Now he walked to the nearest branch and pulled down a fruit.

"Try it," he said, and held it out.

Oswin took it. Then he hesitated, and instead he reached past Garen’s hand and picked a fruit from the branch for himself.

He ate it. He chewed and swallowed, and it stayed fruit.

He laughed. It came out of him helplessly, a cracked and astonished sound, and he sat there under the tree with juice running down his chin and laughed until he had to stop and cough.

They slept under the trees by the river, in the warm gold that cast no shadows.

Logan lay on his back with Alice’s head on his shoulder and listened to the water. Nobody had to hold anybody’s hand to see, and nothing in the dark was waiting for them to let go.

He held hers anyway. So did she.

[ Time remaining: 340 days ]

Oswin was on his feet when Logan woke.

He was standing at the edge of the river with his sword on his back, looking downstream. He was still gaunt, but he no longer looked like a man who was dying.

"It goes to a town," he said, without turning round. "The river. At the end of this layer, where the cave narrows, there is a town called Plenty."

Rishin was sitting up against the tree trunk. Logan saw his jaw tighten at the name.

"A man and a woman came past me on my fourth sleep, going downriver. They tried to feed me, and they told me about it."

Oswin’s voice went rough. "It is where the people who love each other go, and nobody there is ever hungry. Lysa would have liked it."

"And from Plenty?" asked Logan. "The way down?"

Oswin was quiet for the space of three slow ripples on the water.

"I asked them that," he said. "They told me nobody in Plenty has ever gone further down. They said it as if it were a good thing."

Rishin got to his feet.

"It is where people stop," he said. "That is all it is."

He held his hand down to Vina, who was still curled in the grass, and she took it without opening her eyes.

"We are going through Plenty," said the old man. "We are not stopping in it."