Chapter 234 Keepsake

Aldo was still smiling down at Vina when the leaves crunched behind them.

A woman came along the path between the trees. She was short and broad, with grey hair tied back in a scarf, and she carried a covered basket on one arm. She stopped when she saw Hob, and then again when she saw Billy.

"Well," she said. "That is a lot of you."

"Marit," said Aldo. He looked delighted. "I know you. I know your face."

The woman’s expression softened.

"Yes, love," she said. "You do. You have known it for many wakings now."

She set the basket down at the foot of Aldo’s tree and took out a loaf and a jar of water.

Aldo sat down and ate while she talked to the family. He did not seem to mind that he was being talked about.

"I come out to him every waking," Marit said. "I read him his tree, in case he has not, and I bring him bread. He will not leave it. His sister told him to wait, so he waits."

"And he remembers you," said Helen.

"Only my face. That took a long time." Marit glanced at the young man, and her mouth twitched. "I have grown fond of him. It counts, it turns out, if you mean it. It is only slow."

Vina turned to look at Aldo, and her face lit up.

Marit took them on to Keepsake when Aldo had finished eating.

"You will want a roof," she said. "And you will want to know about the Mere before you get there. Everyone does, and nobody likes it."

Aldo waved to them from his tree. Vina waved back until the trunks hid him.

Logan walked beside Alice through the glowing leaves. Her hand was in his, and she kept glancing back the way they had come.

’She is thinking about the carving,’ he thought. ’The husband. Laughs with his mouth shut.’

Alice kept her voice low. "If I forget you, carve it on a tree."

"You will not forget me."

"Carve it anyway."

Keepsake stood in a wide clearing among the white trees.

Its houses were built of pale wood. They had low roofs and wide doorways, and every one of them faced in toward the middle of the clearing, where a fire burned.

A circle was cut in the ground at the far edge, beside a black door that stood upright by itself.

The people of Keepsake were sitting in pairs.

They sat on benches outside their doors and on stumps around the fire, facing each other with their knees close together. In every pair, one talked and the other listened.

Logan watched an old man tell a younger woman about a red boat and a river, slowly, while she nodded and repeated parts of it back.

Then they changed over, and she began talking to him.

"Every waking," said Marit. "Before we do anything else, we tell each other. Not everything. Nobody has time for everything."

"What do you tell?" asked Edda.

"The parts we cannot bear to lose." Marit nodded at the old man with the red boat. "Hesk tells me about his wife. She went on down. I tell him back what he told me, so it is mine as well, and he keeps it."

"Are you his family?" Vina asked.

"No, love. But I sit with him every waking, and he sits with me." Marit smiled. "That is how it starts."

They gave the family two of the empty houses at the edge of the clearing.

Martha set up her pot beside the central fire, and Baldrun went to help her. A few of the Keepsake folk came over to watch the units. A small boy tried to climb onto Billy, and Billy let him, humming loudly.

Marit sat down by the fire with Daniel and Rishin.

"You asked about the Mere," she said to Daniel. "It is the end of this layer. The forest stops, and then there is open ground, and then there is the water."

"How far across?" asked Daniel.

"Nobody here knows. Nobody who has crossed it has come back to say." She looked into the fire. "On the water, you do not need to sleep to lose. You lose with every stroke of the oar."

Garen had come up behind them. He sat down heavily.

"Every stroke," he said.

"A little with every stroke. What only you remember goes first. After that the rest goes too, one piece at a time, unless the ones who love you hold it." Marit’s hands tightened in her lap.

"And there is a warden in it. It lives under the water. It feeds on what falls."

Rishin had not spoken since they sat down. Now he nodded.

"It is as she says," he said. "On the Mere, you hold on to each other or you arrive as nobody."

Daniel studied the old man’s face and the closed fist on his knee. Then he turned back to the fire.

"Then we will hold on," he said.

Logan looked at the units around the fire. Billy had the small boy on his rim, and Halden stood guard over them both with his halberd grounded.

’They will row,’ he thought. ’They will lose nothing out there. And they cannot keep one thing for us.’

They ate with the Keepsake folk round the central fire.

Afterward, without anyone deciding it, the family sat down in pairs the way the village did.

Logan sat with Alice. He told her about Billy rolling ahead of him through the lit leaves and looking back to see whether he was watching. It was a small thing. He told it anyway, and Alice told it back to him.

Helen sat facing Daniel with both his hands in hers. Garen and Isolde sat close together on one bench. Logan heard Isolde say, "Tell me the part with the jaws again."

Bram and Edda sat together and sang the walking song low and soft, verse by verse, until they were both sure of every word.

Vina sat with Rishin.

She had his closed hand on her knees, and she was looking at it.

"Grandpa," she said. "Who remembers with you?"

The old man did not answer.

"You did not lose anything," said Vina. "Not one thing. So somebody must remember everything with you. Somebody who loves you."

Logan stopped talking. Across from him, Alice had gone still too.

"People who love me," said Rishin at last.

"We love you."

"You do, little one." The old man looked down at her. "And you are not the only ones."

Vina thought about that.

Then she turned his fist over on her knee and put both her hands round it, the way the carved old man in the Spindle had held his two stones.

"Then I will remember with them too," she said. "Whoever they are. I will help them."

Rishin’s fingers moved under hers. For the first time since the Ninth Layer, he opened his hand.

The two small grey stones lay on his palm. They were smooth and pale, no bigger than eggs. Logan could see by how the old man’s arm rested that they no longer weighed anything at all.

Rishin looked at them. Then he closed his hand again, gently, with Vina’s fingers still round it.

"Sleep, little one," he said.

[ Time remaining: 316 days ]