Chapter 828: Four Miles of Sleep

The walk north took three days.

They met two Closers on the first day and a pack of scavengers on the second. Nobody was badly hurt. By now, killing small Enders had started to feel almost ordinary. That worried Almond more than anything else.

"Don’t get used to it," Orla said, when he mentioned it. "The ones you get used to aren’t the ones that kill you."

On the second night, Big D sat down beside Almond at the small fire.

He did not say anything for a while. He poked at the coals with a stick. Then he spoke without looking up.

"She’s been holding her stomach for four days," he said. "Every time she thinks nobody’s looking."

Almond went still.

"Kayla didn’t tell me anything," Big D went on. "Kayla’s very good at not telling me anything. But I’ve been watching people for ten thousand years. I know what that looks like."

"She wanted to tell you herself," Almond said quietly.

"Then she can. When we get back." Big D poked the fire again. His voice did not change, but his hand was not quite steady. "I’m just telling you I know. So you don’t have to carry it by yourself out here."

Almond looked at him. The old man’s face was turned to the fire, and it gave away nothing at all.

"Thank you," Almond said.

Big D grunted.

"Go to sleep," he said. "Last night you’ll get any for a while."

They reached the north hill at noon on the third day.

Hessa went up first. She stopped at the top and stood there with her hands at her sides, and she did not move for a long time.

The others came up beside her.

Brightwater lay in a wide, shallow valley below them. They could see the ring of white stones, much bigger than Greywatch’s. Inside it were the walls and roofs of a real city, with towers and bridges and a river running through the middle. The roofs had fallen in. Trees grew out of the windows. Everything was green and gray and still.

And wrapped around the outside of the ring was the Lull.

At first, Almond took it for a long, low hill. It was gray and soft-looking, like a great fold of old fur. It ran all the way around the white stones, mile after mile, until its blunt head rested on the end of its own tail beside the river gate.

Then he saw it breathe.

The whole length of it rose, very slowly. Then it sank again. It took almost a minute.

"That’s it?" Natalia said. Her voice had dropped to a whisper without her meaning it to. "That whole thing?"

"That’s it," Hessa said.

Out in the grass between the hill and the ring, there were small mounds. Almond counted nine before he made himself stop. They were long and low and grassed over. They were about the size of a person lying down.

Hessa was looking at one of them. It was farther out than the rest, almost at the Lull’s side.

Nobody needed to ask whose it was.

They made ready on the hilltop.

Almond had thought about this for three days, and so had everyone else. They went over it one last time.

"Rope first," Rudra said. He uncoiled the long line they had carried from Greywatch. "Everyone ties on. If one of us lies down, the rest drag them."

"True Heading holds us on the line," Almond said. "Rudra in front. Nobody steps off his path."

"Marcus talks," Big D said.

Marcus nodded. He looked pale, but steady.

"I talked into a dead headset for three days on the Shelf," he said. "I didn’t stop. I didn’t know if anyone could hear me." He tried to smile. "This time I’ll know you can. That’s easier."

"And Silvester gets up," Kael said.

"Silvester gets up," Silvester agreed. "And everyone beside him gets up too. Second Wind." He flexed his fingers. "I’ve been practicing. I can do it maybe forty times before I start to feel it. After that, I don’t know."

"Then we’d better not need forty," Rudra said.

Hessa had tied herself onto the rope without a word. She stood at the very back. When Almond looked at her, she met his eyes.

"I’m not going to sit down beside him," she said. "If that’s what you’re afraid of."

"I didn’t say anything."

"You were going to." She looked down at the farthest mound in the grass. "I’ve stood on this hill every year for twenty years. I’m not here to join him. I’m here to finish what he started."

The first mile was easy.

It was a warm afternoon. The grass was soft. The air smelled of clover and running water from the river. It would have been a pleasant walk anywhere else in the world.

Then Natalia yawned.

She did it without thinking. She caught herself and frowned. "Huh," she said.

"It’s starting," Orla said. "Don’t fight it yet. Save your strength for when it’s worth fighting."

True Heading.

Rudra’s orb settled over all of them like a hand on the shoulder. The path ran straight ahead toward the river gate, where the Lull’s blunt head rested on its tail. Nobody could turn from it now, even if they wanted to.

Marcus began to talk.

Left foot, he said, in every head on the rope. Right foot. The grass is soft. That’s all right. Soft grass is good for walking on. Keep walking.

His voice was warm and ordinary. He did not try to sound brave. He just kept talking, the way a man talks to a friend on a long road.

At a mile and a half, Kael stumbled.

He caught himself on the rope. His eyes were heavy. "I’m fine," he said. "I’m fine. I’m only..."

He did not finish. His knees bent. He began, very gently, to lie down.

Silvester went down beside him on purpose. He let his legs go and dropped flat in the grass.

Second Wind.

He got up. And as he rose, Kael rose with him, pulled upright as if by the same hand. Kael’s eyes snapped open. He stood there blinking.

"What just..."

"Keep walking," Silvester said. "One."

At two miles, Orla went down. Silvester got her up. Two.

At two and a half, Ainen sat down in the middle of the path as if he had decided to have a picnic. Silvester dropped beside him. Three. Four. It took two tries.

You’re doing well, Marcus said. You’re all doing very well. Look how far we’ve come. Look at the river. Isn’t it a nice river?

He was swaying himself now. He did not stop talking.

At three miles, the dreams started.

Almond did not notice it happen. One moment he was walking on a soft grassy slope toward a gray wall of fur. The next he was walking on the Sundered Shelf, and the sun was coming up, and Lily was waiting for him at the edge of the canyon.

"You’re tired," she said. She held out her hand. "Come and sit with me. Just for a minute."

He wanted to. He wanted to more than he had wanted anything in his life.

Almond, said a voice in his head. That isn’t her. She’s back at Greywatch. You promised to come back. Keep walking.

The Shelf flickered. For a moment he saw the grass again, and the rope in his hands, and Marcus beside him with blood running from his nose.

Then the Shelf came back, and Lily was still holding out her hand.

He kept walking anyway. He walked through her. It was the hardest thing he had ever done.

They were all seeing something now.

Rudra walked with his jaw clenched tight, staring at nothing. Once he said, "I know you’re not real," very quietly, to someone none of the others could see. Natalia was crying without making a sound. Kael kept turning his head toward the east, as though someone was calling him from there.

Big D walked as he always did. His face did not change at all.

"What do you see?" Almond managed to ask him.

"Chains," Big D said. "Ten thousand years of them." He did not slow down. "It’s showing me somewhere I could finally rest. It doesn’t understand. I’ve already rested in worse places than that, and I always got back up."

Unbowed was holding him. Almond could feel it. Nothing that tired the body could bring him down while he held his ground, and Big D had decided that the whole four miles was his ground.

At three and a half miles, Silvester fell for the eleventh time.

He got up. Everyone beside him got up.

He fell for the twelfth time. He got up slower.

"I’m all right," he said. His voice was slurred. "I’m all right. Twelve."

Then the rope jerked hard, from the back.

Hessa had stopped.

She was standing at the end of the line, with her knife in her hand. She had cut through the knot at her waist, and the rope lay loose in the grass at her feet.

She was looking at the farthest mound. It was only twenty yards away now, close against the Lull’s gray side.

"Hessa!" Orla screamed.

Hessa did not seem to hear her. Her face had changed. All the hardness had gone out of it, and she looked younger, and very tired.

"He’s right there," she said softly. "He’s been waiting such a long time. He’s been asking me to sit down."

Hessa, Marcus said. His voice was cracking. Hessa, that isn’t him. He’s gone. You know he’s gone. You’ve known for twenty years.

"I know," Hessa said. "I know. But he’s asking."

She began to walk toward the mound.

Almond lunged for her and the rope held him back. True Heading held him on the line. He could not turn from it. None of them could. It was the thing keeping them alive, and now it was the thing holding them in place while she walked away.

"Rudra, let go of the heading!"

"If I let go, we all lie down!"

"Silvester!"

Silvester was on his knees. He was trying to stand, and he could not. His legs would not answer. His whole body was shaking with the effort.

"I can’t," he gasped. "I can’t, Almond, I’ve done it too many times, I can’t..."

Hessa reached the mound. She knelt beside it in the soft grass and laid her hand on it, very gently, the way someone touches a sleeping face.

Then she lay down beside it, and closed her eyes.

Nobody moved.

Almond stood on the line with the rope cutting into his hands. Behind him, he heard Orla make a sound he never wanted to hear again.

Ahead of them, the Lull’s great gray side rose. It sank. It rose again.

Then Almond saw that the rise was different. The breath was faster than it had been, and much shallower.

Ten yards ahead, at the river gate, the blunt gray head lifted off the tail it had rested on for two hundred years.

It was very slow. It turned toward them, toward the ten small figures on the grass.

An eye opened.

It was enormous, and pale, and it was not angry. It looked at them the way something looks at a meal that has been a long time coming.

Silvester sagged onto his side in the grass.

Natalia went down. Kael followed her. Orla folded at the knees with her hand still reaching toward Hessa. Ainen sat, and then lay back. Marcus’s voice in their heads faded to a mumble, and then to nothing at all.

Rudra held the heading for three more breaths. Then his eyes closed, and the orb let go, and he fell forward on his face.

Only two were still standing.

Big D stood with his feet planted in the grass and the rope wrapped around both fists. And Almond stood beside him, swaying, with the whole world going soft and gray at the edges.

The Lull’s pale eye fixed on them.

Almond felt sleep come for him like a wave.