Chapter 216: Out of Sight

’Out of their sight, it runs,’ Logan thought.

He stood in the white with one hand raised and watched the number.

It did not fall smoothly. It held, and held, and then it dropped. It held again.

He had no way to know how long each day took to go. Long enough to count to a hundred, perhaps. Perhaps less. He was not going to stand there and find out.

"Alice!" he shouted. "Mom!"

The wind took his voice and tore it to pieces. Nothing came back.

"Nyriel," he said.

The answer came at once, the way it always did. Nyriel laid the land across his sight as a scatter of small points in the white.

There were a great many of them. The units were steady points, spread out in a long smear behind him where the fog had caught them walking. The family were points too.

Nyriel did not say which point was which, but it showed where they were.

Most of them were clustered together, ahead of him and to the left, a stone’s throw away. A few were scattered. One was off to his right, alone. Another was alone behind him. Two more were together, farther off.

’The cluster,’ he thought. ’Whoever is in the cluster can see each other. That is where I have to be.’

He started walking.

He walked into a standing stone almost at once.

It came out of the white a hand’s breadth from his face, and he hit it with his shoulder. He swore and went round it with one hand on its cold surface.

The points in his sight did not get closer as fast as he wanted them to.

[ Time remaining: 326 days ]

A shape loomed at him on his left. He had his blade half drawn before it spoke.

"Boss?"

It was Billy. The wheel rolled up against his leg with a bump.

"Boss, I cannot see a thing. I cannot see my own rim."

"Neither can I." Logan put his hand on the rim and kept walking. "Stay with me."

"Does it count? If I can see you?" Billy’s voice was hopeful. "I am looking at you very hard, Boss."

Logan’s throat closed for an instant.

"No," he said. "It does not count. I am sorry, Billy."

Billy did not answer. But he did not leave Logan’s side either.

Then Logan saw the light.

It was red. It was a dull red smudge in the white where the cluster was, low down, and it did not move. As he came closer, it grew.

It became a glow, and then a small round room of red light in the fog, with shapes standing in it.

Link stood at its centre, holding the iron staff above his head. The red flame lit the fog around him for three or four paces in every direction, and in that space the white was only a haze.

Rishin stood beside him with Vina. His mother stood with his father. Isolde was there, chakram ready, staring out at the fog.

Logan stepped into the light.

His mother turned and saw him. Her face crumpled.

He checked his panel.

[ Time remaining: 325 days ]

It did not change again.

"Four," said Helen. She had her hands on his face. "Logan, how many?"

"Four days." He hated saying it. "I lost four."

Isolde had turned. "Where is Garen? Where is Alice?"

"I do not know. Nyriel can see points, but not who they are." He pointed. "There is one alone to the right. Two together, farther out."

Isolde was already moving. She stopped at the edge of Link’s light, where the red ended and the white began, and she raised both her hands.

"Garen!" she called. "Garen, follow the light!"

Her dome went up round the rim of the red. It did not block the fog. But it shone. It gave off a pale clouded glow that went out into the white farther than Link’s flame could.

"Come to it," said Isolde. Her voice shook. "Come on, come to it."

Garen came first. He burst from the white at a stumbling run with one arm over his eyes, and he walked straight into his wife.

Isolde held on to him and kept her face against his coat.

Garen read his panel over her shoulder. His face went grey.

"Three," he said.

Bram and Edda came next, together. They had kept hold of each other’s arms the whole time, Edda said, and walked toward the glow. Neither of them had been able to see the other’s face.

"Four," said Bram. "Each."

Alice came last.

Logan saw her where the glow thinned, before anyone else did. She was walking slowly, with her bow in one hand and the other stretched ahead of her, feeling for stones.

He went out of the light to get her.

He did not think about it. He went three steps into the white and caught her outstretched hand, and he pulled her back into the red, and only then did he check the number.

It still said three hundred and twenty-five.

’I could see her,’ he thought. ’Even out there. I was close enough to see her, so it waited.’

Alice looked at hers.

"Five," she said. She closed the panel. Her hand was shaking. "Five days. I was walking in a circle."

The fog thinned after that.

It drew back from Link’s light and from Isolde’s dome. Then it retreated from the standing stones, slowly, until Logan could see fifty paces again across the grey floor.

The units were scattered all over it. They were standing exactly where the white had found them, waiting. As the white cleared, they came in toward the family one by one.

Rishin had not moved from Link’s side.

"Now you know the other half," he said.

They were all looking at their panels.

They sat down among the stones and worked out the numbers.

It did not take long. Helen and Daniel had been together the whole time, and so had Rishin and Vina. Isolde had kept her eyes on Rishin and Vina, and they had kept theirs on her.

"Three hundred and twenty-nine," said Helen. "For Daniel and me and Vina, and the old man and Isolde."

"Three hundred and twenty-six," said Garen.

"Three hundred and twenty-five," said Logan. "Bram and Edda, too."

"Three hundred and twenty-four," said Alice.

They looked at each other. Logan understood what it meant before anyone said it.

They had come into the Abyss on the same day. They had walked every layer together, and their counts had always matched. Now they did not.

Now Alice would run out five days before Vina.

"And the units?" said Daniel.

His eyes were on Hob. The aurochs had come in with the rest and was standing behind him, close enough to lean on.

"Their days are the world’s days," said Rishin. "This place does not count them. It never has."

"So their time runs," said Daniel slowly. "Whether we are together or not."

"It runs as it always ran. One day for every day." Rishin looked round at the units. "Your count can wait here. Theirs cannot. And neither can the world above you."

Logan thought of Earth.

He thought of what Rishin had told them at home, before any of them came into the Abyss: that if nobody reached the bottom of the Abyss in time, it would overflow into the world.

’Our counts can stop,’ he thought. ’The world’s cannot.’

They slept together among the stones.

They lay in a close ring, with the units around them and Link standing over them with his flame held high. Isolde set her dome over the whole family before she slept. It did not keep out the fog. It only shone.

Logan woke once. The fog had come back while they slept. It lay thick outside the dome, white and soft and close.

Inside, he could see Alice’s face beside him, and his mother’s beyond her.

He did not look at his panel. He knew what it would say.

When they woke, he looked anyway.

[ Time remaining: 325 days ]

Daniel was sitting up beside Hob. He had the aurochs’s panel open, and his mouth was pressed flat.

"One," he said. "Hob lost one."

They set out when the fog thinned again.

They walked close, with Link at the front and Isolde’s dome ready. Every time the white thickened, they stopped and waited for it to pass.

They had walked a long way among the stones when Vina stopped dead.

"Listen," she said.

They listened.

It came from the fog to their right, thin and high and close. It was a child’s voice.

"Hello?" it said. "Is somebody there? Can you see me?"