Chapter 235 Written on Mark

Vina fell asleep with her hands still wrapped round the old man’s fist.

Rishin did not move them. He sat against the wall of the pale wooden house with the girl curled against his side, and Link stood in the doorway with his flame turned low. Logan lay down beside Alice and watched the old man until his eyes closed.

When he woke, the first thing he did was look for holes.

He went back over the walk to Keepsake and found it whole. Aldo’s tree was there, and Marit’s basket, and the boy climbing onto Billy’s rim. Alice had been beside him for all of it.

He could not find anything missing. That frightened him more than a gap would have, because he knew he would not miss it.

Outside, the people of Keepsake were already sitting in their pairs.

Marit was on a bench by her door with Hesk. The old man was telling her about the red boat again, and she was nodding along. When she saw the family come out, she raised a hand without stopping him.

Logan sat down on the step of the house. Alice came and sat beside him.

"Anything?" she asked.

"Nothing I can find."

"Me neither." She leaned her shoulder against his. "Which means we lost a small thing, or we lost nothing. I do not like not knowing which."

Daniel came out of the second house with Rishin and Vina.

The old man walked behind the girl as he always did now. His fist was closed at his side, and he nodded to Logan as he passed.

"Senior," said Daniel. "Tell us about the Mere. All of it, before we get there."

Rishin stopped by the fire.

"The Mere does not care how you cross," he said. "Oars or wings or swimming, it is all the same to it. It counts the distance over the water, not the strokes. Every length of a boat you go, you lose a little."

"So Sonic cannot fly us over," said Garen.

"Sonic would lose nothing. You would lose the same as in a boat, wherever he carried you." Rishin looked at Garen. "And your portal will not help either. Alice would have to cross first, alone, and she would arrive as nobody."

Garen grunted.

"Then a boat," he said. "And we talk all the way across."

"You talk the whole way," said Rishin. "And you keep talking when you are frightened, and when you are fighting. As soon as you stop holding a thing between you, the Mere can take it from both of you at once."

Isolde’s hand found Garen’s.

"Then I will not stop," she said.

Marit had come over from her bench. She stood listening with her arms folded.

"The old man has the right of it," she said. "There are boats on this side, if you want them. The ones who went over never brought them back."

"We will want a big one," said Logan.

Marit looked at the units, at Hob and Thessaris and the Thistlemaw, and her eyebrows went up.

"You will want a very big one," she said.

Xairon built it on the open ground behind the houses.

The Keepsake folk brought him fallen trunks of the white trees. He walked along each one with his hands spread over the bark, and the wood came apart where he wanted it to and fitted together where he asked. The planks still gave off a faint silver light when they were joined.

It took him the whole waking.

At the end of it there was a broad, flat-bottomed barge lying on rollers beside the path. It was long enough for the units to sit two by two along its sides, with a raised deck amidships for the family.

"Can it float?" asked Vina.

Xairon looked at her and inclined his head.

"He says it floats," said Logan.

Before they ate, Marit brought out a bundle of white bark.

The strips were thin and soft, as long as a hand, and the inner side was smooth enough to write on. She handed them round the family, one strip each, with a stub of charcoal for every two people.

"Write on these," she said. "The things you cannot lose. Put them inside your shirt."

"The carving does not keep it," said Vina. "Grandpa said."

"No, love. It does not keep it." Marit crouched in front of her. "But if you lose a thing, at least you will know it was there. Sometimes that is enough to go looking for it."

Logan sat on the step with the strip of bark across his knee and the charcoal in his fingers.

He did not know what to write.

Alice was writing beside him, quickly, with her hair falling across her face. Across the fire, Garen had covered both sides of his strip and was asking Isolde for another. Edda was writing a single line with great care, and Bram was reading over her shoulder.

Logan wrote:

YOU LOVE ALICE.

YOUR PARENTS AND VINA ARE IN THIS BOAT.

RISHIN CARRIES TWO STONES. DO NOT ASK HIM.

He looked at the last line. Then he folded the strip in half and put it inside his shirt, against his chest.

Rishin did not take a strip.

Marit held one out to him, and he shook his head.

"Nothing I would lose," he said.

Marit studied him a little longer than politeness allowed. Then she put the strip back in her bundle and did not offer it again.

Vina took two. She wrote on the first one with her tongue between her teeth and the charcoal gripped in her fist. When she had finished, she filled the second one and pushed it into the old man’s coat pocket before he could stop her.

"That one is for you," she said. "In case."

Rishin put his hand over the pocket. He did not take the strip out.

[ Time remaining: 315 days ]

They left Keepsake on the next waking. Nobody found a new hole when they looked, and Logan tried not to think about what that meant.

Marit walked with them to the edge of the trees. The Keepsake folk had helped the units roll the barge along the path behind them, and Hob pulled it on a rope at the front with his head down.

The forest ended all at once.

There was open ground beyond the final trunks, flat and grey and covered with short pale grass. On the far side of the grass, the Mere lay perfectly still.

It was white. It was not water-colored or grey but white, like milk in a bowl. A thin mist lay over it, and the mist went on into the distance until it met the pale sky, and Logan could not see any far shore at all.

They pushed the barge down to the edge.

The big units went into their cards first. Hob and Thessaris, the Thistlemaw and Vulkarn and Xairon all folded away, and Daniel and Alice and Logan put the cards in their coats. The rest took their places along the sides, two by two, with the long white oars Xairon had shaped across their knees.

The family climbed onto the deck and sat down two by two, facing each other.

Marit stood on the grass and watched them.

"Talk," she called. "All the way over. Do not stop."

Halden and Terry pushed off from the bank. The barge slid out onto the white water without a sound.

[ You have entered the Mere. ] [ What is not held will fall. ]

Logan felt the first loss on the third stroke.