Chapter 246: Saya

Rishin looked past his daughter at the kneeling woman.

He got up off his knees. He needed no one’s hand to rise, and he crossed the two paces of floor between them as if they were the whole length of the Abyss.

Nell scrambled up and went with him. She took hold of the back of his coat the way Vina took hold of his hand.

"She was asleep when I was," Nell said. "Was she not? I do not remember going to sleep. I remember the gate and Mama’s hands. And then you were holding my hand."

"She was asleep," said Rishin. "She has been asleep all this time."

He knelt down in front of his wife.

He did not wait this time.

Saya’s palms were turned up on her knees. Rishin took both of them in his. The light went into her as it had gone into Nell, until she knelt on the bare floor in a long grey coat with her hands in his.

Her eyes opened.

She saw him at once. Logan watched it happen on her face. There was no puzzlement there, none of what had been in Nell’s eyes. She looked at the white hair and the beard and the lined face, and she knew him.

Her mouth opened.

No sound came out of it. Her lips shaped a word, and Logan saw them make the shape of his name, and there was nothing behind it at all.

’Her voice,’ Logan thought. ’It is in the gate.’

Saya pulled her hands out of his.

She put them on either side of his face. She held his face in both her hands and looked at it, turning it a little to one side and then the other, as though she were reading every line in it. Her thumbs moved over his cheekbones.

Then she pulled him down against her shoulder and held him there.

Rishin made no sound now. He knelt with his face in his wife’s shoulder and his arms round her, and his back shook.

Nell stood beside them with her fist still knotted in his coat. She did not let go of it.

Logan felt Helen’s hand leave his back.

His mother had stepped forward. She stopped again a pace in front of the others, as though she had not meant to move. Her face was wet. She was looking at Saya, and at the girl beside her.

Saya opened her eyes over Rishin’s shoulder.

She saw Helen. Her gaze went past her to Daniel, and Garen and Isolde, and the units in their half circle. It went to Vina last, standing alone at the old man’s side with her fists clenched.

Her hands loosened on Rishin’s back.

She let him go.

She drew back and looked at all of them again, slowly. Then she looked at her husband, and her face changed.

Logan saw the joy go out of it. He saw it turn first to fear, and then to grief, and then to a hard white anger that he had never seen on any mother’s face.

She lifted one hand and pointed.

She pointed back the way they had come. She pointed past the crowd of the kept toward the bottom of the path. She pointed at Pebble’s little cairn and the long climb up the wall.

Her finger did not shake.

"No," said Rishin.

Saya pointed again, harder. Her mouth moved. Logan could read a word on it this time, the same word twice, with nothing in it.

"No," said the old man. "I am not going back up."

Saya’s hands moved.

They moved fast and sharp in front of her, shapes that meant nothing to Logan. Her fingers bent and spread and struck her palm. She touched her chest and then his, and then she made a sharp cutting gesture between them.

Rishin watched her hands. He did not answer.

"She says you promised," said Nell.

Everyone turned to look at her.

Nell had let go of her father’s coat at last. She stood with her arms wrapped round herself, watching her mother’s hands.

"Mama talked with her hands after the gate," she said. "After she gave her voice. We made them up together on the way down. I learned all of them." Her voice wavered. "She says you promised her. She says you promised you would live."

Saya’s hands moved again.

"She says you did not," said Nell. "She says you only waited."

Vina had come round to stand beside Nell.

Logan had not seen her move. She stood shoulder to shoulder with the other girl and looked at Saya, and at the old man.

"He did live," Vina said. Her voice was high and fierce. "He lived on a mountain. He had a pond and a hut, and he made soup for people. He taught my brother the sword."

Saya’s eyes went to her.

"And he came down here," said Vina, "because he promised Nell he would come back. I heard him say it."

Saya stared at her.

Then her face crumpled. She put out one hand toward Vina, slowly, and Vina did not move away. Saya touched her cheek with the backs of her fingers, as lightly as a moth landing.

Her hands moved again, smaller now.

"She asks who you are," said Nell.

"Vina." Vina swallowed. "I am Vina Wolf. He is my grandpa. Not by blood. But he is."

Nell looked sideways at her. "He calls you little one," she said. "I heard him. That is what he calls me."

"He can call us both," said Vina. "There is enough."

Rishin had opened his fist.

The two stones lay on his palm between him and his wife. They were glowing so brightly now that they lit all four of their faces from below.

Nell saw them.

"Papa." She knelt down beside him. "What are those?"

"They are yours," said Rishin. "Yours and your mother’s. They came to me on the Ninth Layer. They are what you never forgave me."

Nell looked at the smaller of the two stones.

She reached out and took it off his palm between her finger and thumb. It came away at once.

She turned it over in her fingers.

"You let go of my hand," she said. "At the gate. Mama had gone and I was holding your hand. Then I let go, and you did not catch it again." She bit her lip. "I was cross. I was so cross with you for not catching it."

"I know."

"But I let go first." Nell looked up at him. "I let go because I wanted to. So you could go on. I remember that now."

She opened her fingers.

The stone fell to the dark floor. Its glow went out as it fell, and it lay there small and grey and ordinary, and the old man made a sound like a man having a splinter drawn out.

The other stone did not move.

It stayed on his palm and burned, white and steady. Saya looked down at it. She did not reach for it.

Rishin held it out to her.

She shook her head once. Then she folded his fingers over it and held them shut.

Logan understood her without needing Nell.

’Not yet,’ he thought. ’She is not ready. Or he is not.’

They slept on the floor beside the two of them.

Nobody suggested it. Martha set her pot down and Helen sat beside it, and the rest of the family sat down one by one on the dark stone near the old man and his wife and his daughter.

The units made a ring around them all. Link stood guard over the two girls, who had fallen asleep side by side in the middle of an argument about which of them he had called little one first.

Saya did not sleep. Neither did Rishin.

They sat facing each other with his closed fist between them. Her hands moved slow and small in the pale glow, and Logan fell asleep watching her talk.

[ Time remaining: 311 days ]