Chapter 5973: The Line In The Snow! II

<Unknown>

She woke in the second chair with a coat over her shoulders that was not hers. It was heavy and warm and smelled of soil and snow and something else she had no word for yet, something that was only him, and she lay very still under it for a while with her eyes half open, watching the soft blue glow of the little fire of Dreams burning on the floor.

It had sunk down low. A cold cup of tea sat on the floor beside it, with pale petals curled at the bottom.

Through the curved shell of the wall, she could hear voices on the porch. One of them she knew better than she knew her own new hands. The other she did not know at all. It was a woman’s voice, young and old at once, careful and quiet and very sad, and the mighty Hoe lay under the coat and listened, because the voices were about her.

She did not catch all of it.

She caught pieces. "It belongs to my father." "His power, waking up in the wrong place." "I have come to bring it home to him."

And then THE Farmer’s voice, low and steady, the voice that had told her it was okay: "She’s not a thing."

After a long while, she heard a cup being set down, full, on the step, and light trembling footsteps going away across the field into the snow.

It belongs to my father. The words went down into her and touched something very old, and it began to stir. She closed her eyes, and in the dark behind them, it came back to her in pieces.

A hand. A great hand, pale gold, holding her. It had held her for some time, warm and certain and unafraid, and all of existence had turned slowly around that hand while it held her, and she had not minded being held, because the hand had never once let her fall.

She remembered the steadiness of it. She remembered thinking, in whatever way she had been able to think then, that it would hold her forever.

Then the breaking. She could not remember where it came from, only that it came all at once, from everywhere, and that something in her cracked, and then something else, and then everything. The long fall apart, in pieces, out into the dark in every direction at once.

And as each piece fell, something going into it, deep and cold and very patient, set there carefully by the same pale-gold hand that had held her, to wait.

She had never known whose hand it was. She knew now.

THE...Dissolved Progenitor.

She lay under the coat for a long time aftr that. She did not know whether she ought to hate the hand. It had held her so gently, and for so long, and then it had planted the pain in every piece of her so that one day it could call her home, and now it was calling, and the ones who had come to answer for it were standing in the snow at the edge of the field.

She thought she ought to feel something very large about all of that. But she was so small now, and so tired, and she found there was no room in her for hate. There was only a quiet, aching sorrow, and under it, a fear she did not want to look at.

Because they were here for her. And THE Farmer was between them and her. And she knew, as surely as she knew anything, that he would not move.

The door opened, and he came in out of the cold with snow on his hat and his shoulders. He stopped when he saw that she was awake.

The mighty Hoe got down from the chair. She let the coat fall from her shoulders onto the seat behind her, and stood up very straight on her bare feet on the warm floor, as straight as she could make her small body stand, and looked up at him. Her molten white rivers glowed a little brighter; they always did when she was afraid.

"If I go with them," she said, "they won’t hurt anything here."

Her voice was small and old and very careful. "They won’t hurt the chickens. Or the lady with the wings. Or you."

She swallowed. "I heard them. They only want me. If I go, they’ll go too."

THE Farmer did not answer right away. He took off his hat and set it on the table, and came across the room, and knelt down on the floor in front of her until his eyes were level with hers. He looked at her for a long moment, very gently, with the same look he gave the seedlings in the long rows when he knelt to check them.

"You’re not a thing," he said. "You’re not something anyone gets to bring home."

He reached out and brushed a little melted snow from the edge of her wrap with his thumb. "You don’t belong to the hand that hurt you. You don’t even belong to me. You belong to yourself."

She stared at him. No one had ever said anything like that to her before. No one had ever said anything to her at all, before him.

"What’s your name?" he asked. He asked it gently.

She opened her mouth to tell him. And then she stood there, with her mouth open and her eyes very wide, because there was nothing there to tell. She searched all through herself, through all nine pieces and every Age she could remember, and found nothing.

She had been held, and broken, and carried, and fused, and woken, and in all of it, no one had ever given her a name. "I...don’t have one," she said, very quietly.

THE Farmer was quiet for a moment, looking at her. Then he smiled a little, and reached out and touched one of the thin white rivers running across the back of her hand.

"Where I was born," he said, "there’s an old story about a jar. Someone opened it, and every trouble inside it flew out and scattered everywhere, and when all of it was gone, there was only one thing left at the bottom."

He held her small hand a moment longer. "Hope."

"You were broken into pieces and scattered everywhere," he said, "and you’re still here." He said it calmly.

"Elpis. In an old language from where I was born, it means hope. If you want it, it’s yours."

She stood very still. "Elpis," she said, very softly, trying the shape of it in her new mouth, and the name went down into her, past her bare feet and her small hands and her molten white rivers, into all nine pieces of her at once, and settled there, and stayed. Her rivers glowed bright and warm. She had been held, and broken, and scattered, and called, and in all of that she had only ever been something. Now, for the first time, she was someone!

The others came in one by one, out of the snow, and filled the small warm room. Henry came first, his wings drawn in close, every eye along them open, and he looked at his father kneeling on the floor in front of the small blue-gold girl, and something settled in his face, quiet and proud.

"Whatever’s out there," he said, "I’m standing next to you this time, Father. Not behind."

Thalia came in after him with her golden tentacles already lifting at her back, steady and silent, and simply took her place at THE Farmer’s left.

Kazuhiko and Barbatos came together, saying nothing, his blades loose in their sheaths and her wings half spread in the doorway. THE Emperor Penguin came last of all, his black-glass plates ringing, and when he understood that something was finally about to happen, he threw back his crowned head and let out a long, delighted cry that shook snow off the roof. The Verdant Regard came in from the rivers, brushed the soil from her apron, and stood by the door with her hands clasped in front of her, and her face held nothing whatsoever.

Lygara came in slowly. She stood near the little fire with her gold and silver wings closed tight against her back, and looked at the small girl, and then out through the window at the snow, toward the place where her oldest friend had walked away.

Her ancient face was full of something the mighty Hoe could see but could not name. She said nothing about it. She only stayed, there by the warm fire, and did not go to the door, and everyone in the room understood what that meant without anyone having to say it.

Astarothael leapt up onto the table beside THE Farmer’s hat and sat down with her tail curled around her feet. She was bound to him and could not act against him, and Elpis watched her discover, with some surprise, that she did not want to.

"Whoever they are," the cat said, with great satisfaction, "I would very much like to see their faces when they learn what this farm is."

Elpis looked at all of them. She looked at the son with eyes on his wings, and the woman with golden tentacles, and the silent blade and the silent wings, and the ridiculous, magnificent bird, and the woman with the apron, and the small winged lady by the fire who had chosen to stay, and the cat on the table.

And she looked at THE Farmer in the middle of them, kneeling on the floor in front of her, who had told her she belonged to herself.

They were all going to stand in front of what was coming. For her. And she understood, very clearly and all at once, that she was not going to let them do it without her.

It was the first choice she had ever made that was entirely her own. If she was going to stand in front of the hand that had set that pain in her, she would not do it as a small frightened girl hiding behind them all. She would do it as what she had been made to be, in the only hands that had ever held her without hurting her.

She reached out and slipped her small blue-gold hand into his. It was warm. It was always warm. "If I have to stand in front of them," Elpis said, "I want to be the thing you hold."

THE Farmer opened his mouth, and she shook her head before he could speak, and her molten white rivers glowed softly, and steadily, and without any fear in them at all. "Not a thing," she said, very quietly. "Yours. Yours to hold."

...!

He corrected her wording lightly!