Chapter 846: The Empty House

They brought Tarren inside and fed him first.

Ainen did that. He did not ask any questions. He put a bowl of stew in front of the thin, sunburned stranger, and a heel of bread that had risen far too well for flour this strange. Then he sat across the table and watched him eat.

Tarren ate like a man who had not eaten properly in eleven days. When he was done, he sat looking at the empty bowl for a long time.

"Thank you," he said.

"Tell us about Westhollow," Almond said.

They were sitting in the great hall, under the walls of names. Big D was there, and Lily, and Rudra and Ainen, and Hessa. The lamps were low.

Tarren looked up at the names on the walls. Then he looked down again.

"Westhollow is small," he said. "Two and a half thousand people, when I was a boy. Our line is old. Older than anyone knows. There’s a tree in the middle of it, a great twisted thing with silver bark. We always said it was a hundred years old." He paused. "I suppose now I know what it really is."

"Somebody’s home," Big D said quietly.

Tarren nodded.

"Forty days ago, something came and sat down on the hill west of our line," he said. "We call it the Leaving."

"What does it look like?" Rudra asked.

Tarren was quiet for a moment.

"Like a house," he said. "An empty house. It’s gray, and it has walls and a roof, and a door that stands open. There are windows, but there’s nothing in them. No light. Nothing moving." He swallowed. "It’s not a house. We all know that. But it looks like one. And at night, you can feel it."

"Feel what?"

"Wanting to go there." Tarren’s voice dropped. "It’s hard to explain. You lie in your bed in Westhollow, in the house you were born in, and it doesn’t feel like home anymore. It feels like a room you’re staying in. And the only thing that feels like home is that gray house on the hill, with its door standing open."

Nobody said anything.

"So people go," Tarren said. "At night. One at a time, at first. They get up out of bed and walk out through the line, and up the hill, and in through the door." He looked at the table. "Nobody comes back out."

"How many?" Lily asked softly.

"Nine hundred," Tarren said. "In forty days."

The hall was very quiet.

"And the stones?" Hessa asked.

"They’re going dim. Not like the stories about Gapmakers, where they go dark one at a time. They’re all going dim together. Slowly. A little more every night." Tarren rubbed his face. "Our warden says it’s because a line is a home. And when nobody feels at home inside it anymore, the line starts to forget what it’s for."

Hessa went pale.

"A line forgetting," she said. "I never thought of it like that."

Ainen had been sitting very still. He spoke for the first time.

"It ends home," he said.

Everyone looked at him.

"It’s not a sleep, or a cold, or a hunger. It ends the feeling of home." He looked down at his own hands. "And every line we’ve seen was somebody’s home once. So it’s going after the one thing a line is really made of."

"How did you get out?" Almond asked Tarren.

Tarren laughed. It was short and tired.

"I didn’t get out," he said. "I felt it, the same as everyone. I lay in my bed and wanted to walk up that hill." He looked up. "So I thought, all right. If I’m going to leave, I’ll leave. But I’ll leave the other way. I’ll leave toward help."

"And it let you?"

"It didn’t stop me. It only wants you to leave. It doesn’t care which way you walk, as long as you go." Tarren looked at Almond. "Every night I was on the road, I felt it pulling at me from behind. Telling me to turn around and go back to that house. I didn’t." He paused. "But I’ve got sisters in there. Two of them. And a warden who’s held that line for thirty years. And I don’t know how many of them are still in their beds."

"We go," Almond said.

Nobody argued.

"Twelve days’ walk," Rudra said. "Clovelle can do it in two. Maybe less. But only eight hands."

"Then eight," Almond said.

He counted them out, the same way he had counted the party for the Lull.

Clovelle, because there was no road without her. Hessa, because her Relight orb could wake dark stones, and because she could watch the way ahead. Tarren, because he knew the ground.

"Ainen," Almond said.

"Yes," Ainen said, before he had finished. "Obviously. It ends home." He spread his hands. "I am home. I’m the most home thing in this whole layer. If anyone can stand in front of that house and not want to walk into it, it’s me."

"Rudra," Almond went on. "Natalia. Marcus."

That made eight, with himself.

Big D did not say anything.

Almond looked at him. Big D was sitting at the end of the table with his scarred arm resting in front of him. He met Almond’s eyes, and then he looked at Lily.

"I’m staying," he said.

Everyone at the table turned to look at him. Big D had not stayed behind once, not since the Door.

"I’ve been on every road since we came through," Big D said. "And every time I come back, I’m a little more broken." He lifted his scarred arm slightly. "Somebody told me once that if I got myself killed while she was busy being careful, she’d never forgive me."

Lily’s eyes had gone very bright.

"I’ll stay here," Big D said. "I’ll keep the names. And I’ll follow her around, the way she said I would." He looked at Almond. "You can manage without me for twelve days." ℓ.

Almond did not trust himself to speak. He nodded.

Hessa watched Westhollow that night.

She sat by the fire in the square, beside the little shoot that had turned to face its golden neighbor. Tarren sat beside her and described the way in words. There was a valley with a river, a line of old white stones, and a twisted silver tree in the middle of a small, gray town.

"I see it," Hessa said, after a while. "I think. Is there a mill? On the river, by the east side?"

Tarren’s breath caught. "Yes. My father built the wheel."

"Then I see it."

She was quiet for a long time after that.

"Well?" Almond asked at last.

"The stones are very dim," Hessa said. "Almost out. And there’s a hill on the west side, and something is sitting on it. It looks like a house." Her voice was steady, but very quiet. "The door is open."

"And the town?"

"There are people in it. Not many lights on." She paused. "There’s a line of people walking out through the stones right now. Toward the hill."

Tarren made a small sound.

"How many?" Almond asked.

"Eleven tonight," Hessa said. "They’re walking very slowly. Like people walking home after a long day. They’re not even talking to each other."

She took her hand away from her eyes.

"I can’t watch any more of that," she said.

They left at dawn.

Lily walked Almond to the west gate. She did not write anything on his arm this time. She held his hand for a while instead.

"It ends home," she said quietly.

"I know."

"So when you’re standing in front of it, and it’s telling you that Brightwater isn’t home," Lily said, "you remember that home isn’t Brightwater."

Almond looked at her.

"Home is the people," Lily said. "It always was. In the bottom world. On the Shelf. Here." She put his hand on her stomach. "It’s this. It’s me. It’s him or her. It’s Big D following me around for twelve days."

"I’ll remember."

"You’d better."

Big D was standing a little way off by the gate. He had his arms crossed and was pretending not to listen.

"Twelve days," he said, without looking at them.

"Twelve days," Almond said.

Short Road.

The world folded, and Brightwater was gone.

They went west for two days.

The land changed as they went. The gray grass gave way to low hills, and then to long, rolling country with forests in the valleys and rivers running between them. Clovelle folded them from hilltop to hilltop. Each fold showed them a little more of a layer none of them had ever seen.

On the first afternoon, they saw a line far off in a valley. It was small, with only a few dozen stones, and there was smoke rising from inside it.

"Somebody’s home," Ainen said softly.

They did not stop. But Natalia raised her hand as they passed, and far below, someone on the wall of that little sanctuary raised a hand back.

Late on the first day, they folded onto a hill above a different valley. There was a line in that valley too.

Its stones were black.

They stood in a ring in the long grass, and every one of them was dark and dead. Inside the ring there was nothing but empty fields, gone back to wild grass, and the stumps of old walls. In the middle stood a tree, black and leafless, its branches broken.

Nobody had lived there for a very long time.

"That’s what happens," Hessa said quietly. "When nobody’s left."

Nobody answered her. Clovelle found the next hill, and they folded on.

On the evening of the second day, they reached Westhollow.

It lay in a narrow valley with a river running through it. The old white stones of its line were so dim that they were hard to see in the dusk. Inside them was a small gray town, with a mill wheel on the river and a great twisted tree in the middle with silver bark.

Hardly any lights were on.

And on the hill to the west, just outside the stones, sat the Leaving.

It looked exactly as Tarren had said. It was gray, and it had walls and a roof. There were windows with nothing in them, and a door that stood wide open.

It looked like the house of someone who had gone away a long time ago and never come back.

Almond felt it the moment they landed.

It did not hurt. It was gentle. It was the feeling of standing on a road at the end of a long day, and seeing a house with its door open, and knowing that it was yours. That everyone you loved was inside. That you could stop now, and rest, and never have to be brave about anything ever again.

He took a step toward it before he knew he had moved.

"Almond," Ainen said sharply.

Almond stopped.

He looked down at his own hand. Lily had not written on it this time. But he could still feel where she had pressed it against her stomach.

Home is the people.

He stood there on the hilltop, breathing hard, and he did not take another step.

"It’s strong," he said hoarsely.

"Yes," said Ainen. He was staring at the gray house on the hill with a very strange look on his face. "And I know what it is now."

"What?"

"It’s a host," Ainen said. "Just like me. It’s standing there with its door open, offering people a place to rest." His voice went very quiet. "Only it’s lying."

Down in the valley, the dim white stones flickered.

And through the gap between two of them, very slowly, a line of people began to walk out of Westhollow. They were heading up the hill toward the open door.