Chapter 5974: The Line In The Snow III

By the middle of the morning, they stood on both sides of the farm.

To the east, on the long ridge of frozen current above the starlit grass, the Shepherd’s detachment waited in silent ranks, Unfathomables in front and Half-Unfathomables behind, with Roxanna at their head in her split burnt-gold armor and Ione Kalliste a step behind her, grey glass arm at her side, and the Iron Psalm beyond them. To the west, at the end of a silver path that still glowed faintly through the dark, Phaedra and Thessaly hung in the air with their great silver wings spread wide, Kir One and Kir Two standing vast and patient behind them, and Lifthrasir a little apart from all of them, small and still, with her hands closed at her sides.

Between them lay the farm. It was very small against so much. A mile of black-gold soil, three dark rivers, a coop with snow on its walls, a little house of curved shell with amber windows, and a man in a straw hat walking slowly down one of his rows with a plain hoe over his shoulder, paying no attention at all to what waited on either side of him.

The two sides saw each other at the same moment. It was the first time either of them had known the other was there, and for a long while no one on either ridge moved. Phaedra’s cold eyes narrowed at the falling stars etched across the armor in the east. Roxanna’s black eyes moved slowly over the silver wings in the west, and settled on the two vast obsidian faces behind them, and stayed there.

Neither side knew what the other had come for, and neither was willing to be the first to ask.

Noah did not look up at either of them. He reached the end of the row, leaned the plain hoe against the fence of the coop, and knelt down in the snow at the edge of the field, and put both hands flat into the black-gold soil.

Then he gave. He gave as he had every moment since he first broke ground here, without hurrying and without holding anything back: his Dreams, slow and blue-gold, and his Nightmares, dark and patient, and the warm authority of the farm, all of it flowing out of his hands and down into the soil and outward. THE Bounty That Owes Nothing turned in him, quietly, and existence took what he gave and gave it back, larger, and he gave that too, and it came back larger still.

The farm answerd first. The soil beneath his hands darkened and grew rich, the three rivers brightened until they ran with a clear blue-gold light, and the snow falling over the field began to glitter as it came down. Then the giving went out past the edges of the farm, and the grey light of the Fallow came with it, rolling outward across the starlit grass in long slow waves, east and west at once, under the feet of both armies.

They felt it. Every one of them felt it. On the eastern ridge, the Unfathomables in the front rank went rigid as their own Narratives leaned out toward the farm again, drinking from the air without permission, and this time it was far stronger than before. On the western side, Kir One turned one of its great faces toward the farm, and then another, and then all of them, slowly, and was still.

Roxanna felt her Vein stir in her cracked forearm, an itch running from wrist to elbow, THE Break That Goes All the Way Down waking on its own and wanting very badly to be used. She closed her hand on it and held it still.

Phaedra lifted one hand and called THE Dawn That Does Not Ask, and the pale light ran out from her fingers across the whole of the farm, searching every row and every river and every shadow for whatever was hidden there. It found nothing hidden. It found only giving, everywhere, flowing out of the man in the field and coming back and flowing out again, with nothing held behind it and nothing concealed beneath it, and that unsettled her more than any hidden thing could have.

She lowered her hand slowly, and her eyes squinted with caution.

Thessaly called THE Thing Behind Every Door. Her Fear rolled out across the snowy field in a long dark wave, the certainty that something worse was coming, and it washed over the coop and the house and the rivers and the kneeling man, and for the first time in her very long life, it found nothing on the other side afraid of it. Thessaly stared at the farm, and the grin slid slowly off her face.

Noah went on giving. And as he gave, he felt it again, nearer than it had ever been. At the edges of everything he had ever given himself to, out across existence, in the regions that had grown so rich and so pure, something was gathering. It was faint, and it was enormous, and it was clearer than anything he had ever felt, condensing slowly out of existence’s own essence, from everywhere at once.

|The condensation deepens.|

|It cannot be grasped.|

|It is closer than it was.|

...!

He did not reach for it. He knew, without needing to be told, that reaching would be the one sure way to lose it. He only kept his hands in the soil, and kept giving, and let it come as close as it wanted to.

Behind him, the door of the little house opened, and Elpis came out barefoot into the snow. She walked down the steps and out across the field, past Henry with his wings spread and every eye along them open, past Thalia with her golden tentacles lifted at her back, past Kazuhiko and Barbatos and THE Emperor Penguin with his crown held high, past the Verdant Regard with her hands clasped and her face empty, past Lygara standing very still with her wings closed, past the white cat on the fence post.

None of them stopped her. She walked all the way to the edge of the field, small and blue-gold, with molten white rivers glowing softly across her skin, and stopped beside the kneeling man.

Noah took his hands out of the soil and looked up at her. She looked back at him, and then she turned and looked out across the field, west, at the silver wings and the vast faces, and at the small, still figure standing a little apart from them. Then Elpis began to shine.

She shone white-gold and blue-gold together, brighter and brighter, until the snow falling around her turned to points of light. Her small shape drew in on itself, and lengthened, and changed, and when the light settled, there was a hoe lying across Noah’s open hands, long-handled and gleaming, with thin rivers of molten white running along its blade, humming softly against his palms. On both ridges, every eye was on it. On the western side, Lifthrasir flinched. Beside her, her sisters’ faces went hard, and bright, and eager!

Roxanna spoke first. She stepped forward to the very edge of the frozen ridge, where the starlit grass began, and raised her voice so that it carried clearly over the whole of the farm without ever becoming a shout.

"Dreaming Human Origin," she said. "I am Roxanna, of THE Shepherd of Falling Stars. My King has asked for you."

She did not reach for her Vein. She let it itch in her arm and kept her hand still. "I would rather you came without ruin. I have seen enough ruin. But you will come."

From the west, Phaedra answered before Noah could. Her voice was cool and clear and very old.

"We are the daughters of THE Dissolved Progenitor," she said, and on the eastern ridge, more than one head turned sharply at the name. "What you are holding belongs to our father. It will come home to him, and it will be purified, as it should have been long ago. Give it to us, and we will not stand between you and the Shepherd’s people."

Her cold eyes moved briefly to Roxanna, and back. "Keep it, and we will."

In Noah’s hands, Elpis went very still.

Noah rose to his feet, with the mighty Hoe in his hands and snow on his hat and his shoulders. He looked east, at Roxanna and the ranks behind her, at Ione’s grey glass arm and the tired face of the man who had once named him. He lookd west, at the silver wings and the vast faces, and at Lifthrasir.

Then he answered both of them with a single sentence. "This is a farm."

He turned the Hoe in his hands and set the edge of her blade into the snow at the very border of his field. Then he drew her, slowly, from one side of the farm to the other, and behind her she left a long, clean furrow in the snow, dark and straight and steaming faintly where the black-gold soil showed through. When he reached the far side, he lifted the blade, and turned, and stood in front of it.

"Everything on this side of the line grows," Noah said. "Nothing on this side gets taken. I would advise for nobody to cross this line. I would advise for nobody...to cross my line."

HUUM!

Around him, invisible, twenty-three walls turned slowly in the cold air.

On the far side of the line, Lifthrasir’s hand began to rise. Inside her, the small dark storm of her Calamity stirred and turned, and white lightning crawled faintly across her knuckles, and she did not stop it. She looked across the furrow, across the snow, at the man standing in front of it with the Hoe in his hands, the man who had reached into nothing and given her back the dream she was spending now.

He looked back at her. Neither of them looked away.

Then the snow stopped. It did not slow, or thin, or drift down in a last few flakes. It simply stopped, all at once, everywhere, over the farm and the starlit grass and both ridges and all of THE Infinite Carcosa beyond them.

In the great silence that followed, there was not a sound anywhere on either side of the line, not a breath, not a wingbeat, not the turning of a single face. Every lifeform on that field stood absolutely still, and waited, in the last instant before the war began.