Chapter 217: Can You See Me

Vina was already turning toward the voice.

Rishin’s hand closed on hers before she had taken a step.

"Together," he said. "All of us, or none."

"She is by herself, Grandpa."

"I know." He did not let go. "And if you run into that, you will be by yourself too."

He looked at Link. The young man lifted the iron staff. The whole family turned toward the voice and went with him, step by step, inside the red light.

She was sitting with her back against a standing stone.

She was small. She was smaller than Vina, with brown hair cut short and a coat that was too big for her. Her knees were pulled up to her chin, and her arms were wrapped round them.

When the red light reached her, she lifted her head.

"Can you see me?" she said.

"Yes," said Vina. She crouched down in front of her. "We can see you."

The girl studied her without blinking. Then she held up her hand and opened her panel, and turned it round so they could read it.

[ Time remaining: 11 days ]

While they looked at it, the number changed.

[ Time remaining: 10 days ]

Nobody moved.

"It is still going," the girl said. Her voice did not shake. It had gone past shaking. "You can see me, and it is still going."

Logan understood. He saw his mother understand it too, and put her hand over her mouth.

’We can see her,’ he thought. ’But we do not love her. Not yet. Not the way the panel means.’

’Kindly is not the same thing.’

Vina had understood it as well. She looked round at Rishin, and her face was white.

"Where are your mother and father?" said Helen. She knelt down beside Vina. "Sweetheart. Where did you lose them?"

"In the white." The girl pointed past the stone, into the fog. "We were walking, and it came. My name is Mira."

"Nyriel," said Logan.

The points came up across his sight. There were the units and the family, all clustered round Link’s light.

And there, far off past the stone, there were two more points. They were moving. They were not moving together. They went back and forth across the stone floor in long, ragged lines. They drifted apart and then crossed, then drifted apart again.

’Searching,’ he thought. ’They are searching for her. And they have each lost the other doing it.’

They were a long way off. With the whole family walking inside Link’s light, step by careful step, it would take far too long.

[ Time remaining: 9 days ]

Mira’s panel had changed again.

Logan stood up.

"Alice," he said.

She was already beside him. She did not ask him what he meant. She looked at the two points he was pointing toward, and then at the girl, and then back at him.

"Together," she said.

"Together."

He turned to the others.

"If the two of us go and keep each other in sight every step, our counts will wait," he said. "We can go fast. You cannot. Not all of you, not with the fog."

His mother opened her mouth.

"I will not let go of her," said Alice. "Not once. Not for a step."

Helen looked at her. Then she looked at her son. Then she shut her mouth and nodded.

Rishin had been watching all of it. He did not argue.

"Billy," said Logan. "Sonic. With us. Mira, can you hold on to a wheel?"

They went fast.

Billy carried the girl. She sat on his rim between the blades, with both arms locked round the hub, and her eyes were enormous.

Sonic flew low above them with lightning crackling round his hands, so that his light went ahead of them into the fog.

Logan ran with Alice’s hand in his. Every few steps he glanced at her. Every few steps she glanced back.

The fog thickened and thinned. Each time it thickened, they slowed down and closed up until their shoulders touched. He could see her face when he turned his head. That was all he needed.

His count did not move. He checked it twice, running, and it stayed at three hundred and twenty-five.

Mira’s went down to eight.

The first point was a woman.

She was walking in a long straight line through the white, calling the girl’s name. Her voice was raw. She had her hands stretched out ahead of her, and she walked straight past them without seeing them.

"Here!" said Logan. "She is here!"

The woman turned. She saw the wheel, and the small shape on its rim.

She made a high, broken sound. Then she was across the stone and had the girl off the rim and in her arms, and she was holding her so tightly that Mira squeaked.

Logan looked at the girl’s panel. She was still holding it open, over her mother’s shoulder.

It had stopped at eight.

The second point was the father. Sonic found him by flying straight to him and shouting until he followed the lightning.

He came out of the white at a run, and he did not stop running until he had both of them in his arms.

Logan and Alice stood a little way off, holding hands, and did not watch.

At last the mother looked up at them over her daughter’s head. Her face was wet.

"I cannot thank you," she said. "There is no way to."

"Your count," said Alice. "Yours and his. How much did you lose?"

The woman looked at her husband. He looked at her.

"I do not know," she said. "I did not look. I did not care."

Their names were Hanne and Ivo, and they lived among the standing stones.

They had lived there a long time, Ivo said. Long enough that they had stopped counting by anything but the girl’s height.

"Here, your count can wait," he said. "If you are together, it waits forever. So we stay together." He looked down at Mira. "We stopped walking a long time ago."

"Why?" asked Alice. "Why stop?"

Hanne looked past them, the way the wind came from.

"Because of the Whiteout," she said. "At the end of the stones, the fog never lifts. It is a full day’s walk, and it is so thick you cannot see your own hand. Nobody crosses it together. It pulls you apart."

"And a thing lives in it," said Ivo, low. "It finds the ones who are alone."

They took Hanne and Ivo and Mira back to the family.

Mira kept tight hold of her mother’s hand, and her mother kept hold of Ivo’s. They walked inside the red of Link’s light in a chain of three.

Vina ran to meet them. She stopped in front of Mira and looked at her.

"Can you see me?" said Mira. She said it with a small, shy smile, as if it were a joke between them now.

"Yes," said Vina. "Can you see me?"

Later, when the family had set out again, Logan walked at the front with Rishin and told him about the Whiteout.

The old man listened. He did not seem surprised by any of it.

They walked on through the stones for the rest of that waking. The stones grew fewer. The gaps between them grew wider. The wind came steadily from ahead of them now, cold and wet.

Then the stones stopped.

The grey floor ran on without them. Fifty paces ahead, it ran into a wall.

It was white. It rose from the stone floor straight up into the pale glow above, and it stretched away to the left and the right as far as Logan could see. It did not drift or roll or thin.

It stood there as solid as a cliff.

A shape moved inside it.

It was huge, and it was slow. It was only a shadow, a long dark shape passing behind the white, the way a fish passes under ice.

It did not come out. It went along the wall from left to right, and then it was gone.