Chapter 196: The Road To Plenty

There was a path along the river, and they took it.

It was only a strip of trodden earth between the water and the grain, but it ran on ahead of them without a break, round every bend.

Feet had made it. A great many feet had walked this way, Logan thought, and none of them had come back up it.

Billy rolled at the front with Halden. Bread walked at Oswin’s heel, and his copper bell rang softly with every step.

Vina had hold of the old man’s hand again. Every few steps she let go of it to point at a heron or a scarecrow in the fields, and then took hold of it again.

Rishin let her. He walked steadily and looked straight down the path, and he did not look at the fields at all.

The cave narrowed as they went.

It happened slowly. The far walls, which had been too distant to see, came in until Logan could make them out on either side as a faint gold haze.

The glowing roof sank lower. It was still too high to reach, but it was no longer as far away as the sky.

The fields grew smaller between the orchards. Then there were walls between the fields, low ones of piled stone, and gates in the walls.

"Somebody built those," said Daniel. He was looking at the stonework with his head on one side. "Carefully, too. They meant them to last."

Then they saw the first house.

It stood back from the river among its trees. It was white, with a roof of thatch and a green door, and there was smoke going up from its chimney.

A man was up a ladder against the nearest tree. A woman stood at the foot of it with her apron held out, and he was dropping fruit into it one at a time. Every time one landed, she laughed.

They both looked round at the sound of Bread’s bell. The woman lifted her hand.

"Going to Plenty?" she called.

"Yes," said Logan.

"Everybody is." She smiled at him. "It is not far now. Two sleeps, if you dawdle."

After that, there were houses all along the river.

They stood in ones and twos at first and then in little clusters, with paths running between them. Every house had its orchard and its strip of grain. Every door was open.

The people in them were all in pairs.

Logan saw a young man feeding a girl with honey on a spoon while she sat on a wall and swung her legs. He saw two old women shelling peas into one bowl and passing the peas to each other.

Children ran along the riverbank, and their parents called them in to be fed.

Everyone waved. Everyone asked if they were going to Plenty, and everyone smiled when Logan said yes.

"It is lovely," said Helen. She sounded unsure of it.

"It is," said Alice.

Logan noticed that she was holding his hand very tightly.

It was Garen who said it aloud.

"There are no weapons," he said, in a low voice.

Logan had seen it already, without putting it into words. There had been a sword hung over the door of the third house they passed. Its scabbard had gone green, and a bird had nested in the hilt.

He had seen a shield used as a lid on a water barrel. He had seen a bow with no string, propped up in an orchard to hold a young tree straight.

"And no units," said Isolde. "Not one. Not since the first house."

Logan looked along the river. She was right. There were people in every field and on every doorstep, and there was not a single summoned thing among them.

The family’s units walked along the path through the middle of it all like a parade, and the children stopped to stare at Billy.

’Their years have run out,’ Logan thought. ’Every unit they brought in is gone, because their year is gone. These people are never leaving the Abyss.’

He looked at the young man on the wall with the honey spoon.

’And they do not mind,’ he thought. ’That is what is wrong with this place. Nobody here minds.’

They found the couple Oswin had seen at a bend in the river, late in that waking.

Their house stood on a rise above the water. The man was sitting on the step mending a basket. The woman was hanging washing between two trees.

The man looked up and saw Oswin. The basket fell off his knees.

"Marit," he said. "Marit, look."

The woman turned round with a wet shirt in her hands. She looked at Oswin standing on the path with his sword on his back and a great grey dog beside him.

Then she dropped the shirt in the grass and came down the slope at a run.

"You are alive," she said. She took hold of both his arms, as if she needed to check. "We tried. Fenn tried, and then I tried. It all went to ash, and we left you there."

"You had to," said Oswin.

"We should have stayed."

"You could not have done anything by staying." Oswin’s voice was gentle. "These people found me. They found a way."

Marit looked past him at the family on the path, at the old man and the girl and the units standing in the grain behind them.

"Then you must come in," she said. "All of you. Please. You must let us feed you."

"We cannot eat what you give us," said Alice. "It is not given in love. Not yet."

Marit laughed. It was a startled sound.

"No," she said. "I suppose it is not. Then come in and feed each other at our table. That much we can give you."

They slept in Fenn and Marit’s barn.

Logan lay in the hay with Alice and listened to the river. Through the open door, he could see the shape of Fenn’s shoulders where he sat on the step.

He got up and went out to sit beside him.

Fenn was a broad, quiet man with grey in his beard and soil in the lines of his hands. He moved over to make room on the step without being asked.

"How long have you been here?" Logan asked.

"I do not know." Fenn thought about it seriously. "Our count ran out at the Foot. We crossed the line and sat down by the river, and Marit cried for a whole waking. Then we got up and walked here."

He looked at the dark orchard.

"I do not look at my panel any more. There is nothing on it now except our names."

"And the way down? Past Plenty?"

"There is a way. The river goes down it." Fenn picked a strand of hay off his knee. "Nobody goes."

"Why not?"

Fenn turned and looked at him. He seemed genuinely puzzled.

"Why would they?" he said. "Everybody here has somebody, and nobody is hungry. What is down there that is better?"

Logan did not have an answer to give him. He went back to the barn.

[ Time remaining: 339 days ]

Marit had one more thing to tell them when they woke, while they fed each other at her long table.

She said it to Oswin. She said it carefully, the way Helen said things to Vina that would hurt.

"You will not be able to stay in Plenty," she said. "Not by yourself. Even with the bread in you. I want you to know that before you get there."

Oswin put down his cup.

"Why not?"

"There is nobody alone in Plenty." Marit’s hands were folded on the table. "Not ever. When one of a pair dies, the other one is gone by the next waking. Nobody sees where they go. Their house is just empty."

"Where do they go?" asked Vina.

Marit looked at her. Then she looked at Rishin.

"I do not know, sweetheart," she said. "Nobody asks."

They reached Plenty before the next sleep.

The cave had narrowed until both walls stood clear on either side, close enough to see the rock. The glowing roof bent down to meet them. Under it, filling the whole width of the narrows from wall to wall, there was a town.

The houses were all white, and they climbed both banks of the river in rows. Bridges crossed between them at every street.

Long tables stood out in the open lanes with people sitting at them in pairs, and the sound of a fiddle came up the river from deep inside the town.

Beyond the last houses, at the very end of the cave, the river poured into a cleft in the rock and vanished. It was the only dark thing in all of that gold.

"There," said Rishin. "That is the way down."

The road went into the town under an arch of woven willow branches, hung with ribbons. An old man sat on a bench beside it in the warm gold. He was eating a fruit that the woman beside him had cut into slices for him.

He watched them come. As Rishin passed under the arch with Vina’s hand in his, the man on the bench stopped chewing.

He stared at Rishin’s face. He stared at his bare feet and at the plain sword on his hip. Then he set the slices down on the bench beside him.

"I know you," he said.

Rishin did not stop walking.

"No," he said. "You do not."