Chapter 847: A Table In An Empty House

They went up the hill at dawn.

There were five of them. Ainen went first, with his pack on his back and the iron pot tied to it. Almond walked beside him. Behind them came Tarren and Mira, holding hands.

"You don’t have to come," Ainen had told them before they left.

"Essa is in there," Mira said. "She went in because she thought I’d follow. I’m going to follow."

Rudra came last of all. He did not go in. He stopped on the grass a few paces outside the open door and planted his feet.

True Heading.

He set it facing back down the hill, toward the dim stones of Westhollow and the twisted silver tree.

"Anyone who comes out of that door," he said, "comes out onto my line. They’ll be able to find their way home from here. Even if they can’t find it in themselves."

Marcus stood beside him, with one hand already pressed to his temple.

"And if you need to call anyone," Marcus said, "I’m here."

The door of the Leaving was not a door.

Up close, Almond could see that. It was the right shape, and it stood open. But the edges of it were soft and gray, like fog that had decided to hold still. There was no hinge. There was no frame. There was only the dark beyond it.

Ainen stopped on the threshold.

"Remember," he said quietly. "Whatever you see in there, it’s not real. It’ll look like home. It’ll smell like nothing."

"How do you know?"

"Because a real home always smells like something," Ainen said. "Somebody cooking. Somebody’s boots by the door. Woodsmoke. It never smells like nothing."

He stepped inside.

It was a hallway.

It was long and gray and quiet. It ran straight ahead farther than Almond could see. On both sides were doors, hundreds of them, all closed except for a crack at the bottom where a little light came through.

Almond walked past the first door. He did not mean to look through the crack. He looked anyway.

It was the top of the tower in Brightwater.

The broken roof, the lamplit city spread out below. And Lily, sitting on the edge of the wall in the evening light, turning to look at him with a smile.

"There you are," she said. "Come and sit with me."

Almond’s feet stopped walking.

He wanted to. He wanted to more than he had wanted anything since the Lull’s sleep.

He made himself look closer.

The lamps in the city below were not flickering. They were perfectly still, like paint. There was no wind in Lily’s hair. When she smiled, it was exactly the smile he remembered, and it did not change at all.

And there was no smell. Not woodsmoke, not the river, not her.

"You’re not warm," he said quietly, to the Lily behind the door. "She’s always warm. You’re not."

He made himself walk on.

Ainen was walking with his eyes closed.

Taste.

"Nothing," he muttered. "Nothing, nothing, nothing. It all tastes of nothing." He opened his eyes. "Except that way. Straight ahead. There are people that way. Lots of them."

Behind them, Tarren had stopped at a door. He was staring through the crack with his face gone white.

"That’s our house," he said. "That’s our mother’s kitchen. She died when I was twelve."

"Tarren," Mira said. "Tarren, come on."

"She’s making bread."

"She isn’t," Ainen said gently, coming back for him. "Smell it."

Tarren stood very still. He breathed in.

Nothing.

His face crumpled. He turned away from the door and let Mira pull him on.

The hallway ended in a great room.

It was enormous, with a ceiling lost in the gray dark. It was lit by a pale light that came from nowhere. Down the whole length of it ran a long table, and around the table sat hundreds of people.

They sat very still. They had plates in front of them, and the plates were empty. They had cups, and the cups were dry. They sat with their hands folded in their laps and stared down at their empty plates, waiting.

They were so faint that Almond could almost see through them.

At the far end of the room stood a great stone hearth. It was big enough to roast a whole ox in. It was cold. There was no wood in it, and no ash. It looked as if there had never been a fire in it at all.

"That’s it," Ainen whispered. "That’s the heart of it. A house with a table and a fireplace and nobody cooking." His voice shook. "Nobody ever comes in from the kitchen. Nobody ever says it’s ready. They just wait."

Mira was staring down the table.

"Essa," she breathed.

Halfway down, a young woman sat with her dark hair falling over her face. She was staring at her empty plate. She looked very much like Mira, only thinner, and fainter.

She did not look up.

Ainen walked to the cold hearth.

He did it slowly. He did not look at the people at the table. He went all the way down the long room to the great stone fireplace, and he knelt in front of it, and he took off his pack.

He laid out his kindling. He set the iron pot on the cold stones.

The room shifted around him.

The pale light flickered. The ceiling seemed to come lower. The walls drew in a little, the way a fist closes. Almond felt the Leaving notice them for the first time. It was the way a house feels when someone walks into it who does not belong.

"Ainen," he said.

"I know," said Ainen. "Let it."

He struck a spark.

Hearth.

The fire caught.

It was small, the way all of Ainen’s fires started. But it was the first real fire that had ever burned in that hearth. It crackled. It popped. It threw a warm orange light out across the gray stones.

And it smelled of woodsmoke.

All down the long table, heads began to lift.

Ainen did not look up. He was working. He poured water into the pot, and threw in salt and the last of the dried meat, and some herbs he had picked on the road. He took the last of his flour and shaped it into a round loaf in his palms.

Long Harvest.

The loaf rose under his hands. It swelled and puffed and went golden, and the smell of fresh bread rolled out across the room.

The walls stopped closing in. Then, slowly, they started to fall back.

"Marcus," Almond said. He did not raise his voice. He knew Marcus would hear him. "Now. Carry him."

Far outside, on the hillside, Marcus pressed his hand to his temple.

Voice.

And Ainen’s voice went into every head in that great gray room at once.

Dinner’s ready.

It was the simplest thing in the world.

It was what every mother and father and cook in every home had ever called out to a house full of people. Ainen said it the way he had said it ten thousand times in the kitchens of Brightwater and the Shelf and the bottom world.

Dinner’s ready. Come and eat. There’s bread, and it’s hot, and there’s enough for everybody.

Down the long table, a man stood up.

He was very faint. He looked around the room as if he had just woken up. He looked at the fire burning in the hearth, and at the round man kneeling beside it with a loaf of bread in his hands.

Then he walked down the room to the fire.

Ainen broke off a piece of the loaf and handed it to him.

Open Table.

The man took it. He held it for a moment, feeling the warmth of it. Then he ate.

His edges came back. He did not go solid all at once. But he went from faint to pale, and from pale to almost whole. He stood there in front of the fire, chewing slowly, and tears began to run down his face.

Another person stood up from the table. Then another. Then ten more, then fifty.

They came down the long room toward the fire in a slow, quiet river. Ainen broke bread and broke bread and broke bread, and Long Harvest kept the loaf whole in his hands no matter how much he tore away. People took it and ate, and they came back to themselves.

Essa did not stand up.

She sat at the table staring down at her empty plate while the room emptied around her. Mira ran to her and knelt beside her chair.

"Essa," she said. "Essa, look. It’s me. It’s dinner. Ainen made bread. Look."

Essa did not look.

"She’s too far gone," Tarren said. His voice was breaking. "She’s been here ten days. She can’t hear it."

Almond crossed the room.

He knelt on Essa’s other side. He did not say anything. He put his hand on her thin, faint shoulder.

Carry.

It was nothing like carrying a kingdom. She weighed almost nothing. But the weight of her was all one thing. It was ten days of sitting at an empty table in a house that lied, waiting for someone to call her name.

He took it.

Essa’s head came up. She blinked. She looked at Mira.

"Mira?" she whispered. "You came."

"I came," Mira said, and pulled her into her arms.

Not all of them stood up.

When the river of people had passed down the room, Almond walked the length of the long table. Some chairs were still filled. The people in them were so faint that they were barely there at all. They did not lift their heads when Ainen called. They did not stir when Almond touched them.

He tried to carry them. There was nothing left to carry.

"The first ones," Callum said, much later. "The ones who went in forty days ago. They’d been sitting there too long."

There were two hundred and eighty-one of them.

Six hundred and nineteen walked out.

They came out through the gray door into the morning sun, one after another. They came out onto Rudra’s heading, and they found that they knew the way home. They walked down the hill toward Westhollow without needing anyone to show them.

Ainen came out last.

He stood on the threshold of the Leaving and looked back into the gray hallway. Then he took one last piece of bread from the loaf in his hands and set it down on the floor just inside the door.

"Even an empty house gets hungry," he said quietly.

Open Table.

The floor of the hallway took the bread.

The Leaving shuddered from roof to foundation. It had never been fed in its life. It had only ever offered. Now something had offered to it, and it did not know what to do.

For the length of one meal, it could not raise a hand against any guest of Ainen’s.

"Almond," Ainen said. "The door."

Almond stepped up beside him. He looked at the soft gray edges of the doorway, at the line between inside and outside.

Sever.

The line was there. It ran all the way around the door, thin as a hair, the place where the house ended and the world began.

He cut it.

The Leaving did not fall.

It simply went away. The walls went thin, like mist burning off a field in the sun. The roof went next. The windows went last of all, and then there was nothing on the hill at all but grass. In the middle lay a small, gray, worn thing like an old iron key.

Down in the valley, Westhollow’s stones flared up white.

They did not dim this time. They stayed bright. All the way around the ring, they blazed like they had not blazed in forty days. In the middle of the town, the great twisted tree with the silver bark lifted its drooping branches toward the sun.

Ainen picked up the old gray key.

Host.

It folded, slowly, the way a door swings shut on a warm room. The orb it left was the deep brown of an old oak door, polished by hands.

[Power Orb: Open Door]

[Quality: C]

[Anyone who has eaten at your table can always find their way back to it, wherever they are.]

Ainen read it. Then he sat down in the grass on the empty hilltop and covered his face with his hands.

Almond sat down beside him and did not say anything.

After a while, Ainen lowered his hands.

"Two hundred and eighty-one," he said.

"I know."

"I was too slow."

"You came twelve days," Almond said. "You brought your own table into a house that lies. You fed six hundred and nineteen people who thought they’d never eat again." He put his hand on Ainen’s shoulder. "You weren’t slow. You were late. That’s not the same thing."

Ainen did not answer. But he leaned into Almond’s hand a little, and he did not move away.

That evening, Callum met them under the silver tree.

The old warden stood straighter than he had the night before. The whole town was full of lights. People were sitting outside their doors and talking, and somewhere a child was laughing.

"Westhollow’s door is open to Brightwater," Callum said. "For as long as there’s a Westhollow. Anything you need, you ask."

"We’ll ask," Almond said.

Hessa had been sitting a little apart, with her hand over her eyes. She had been watching Brightwater all day, the way she always did when Almond was far from home.

Now she lowered her hand. Her face was strange.

"Almond," she said. "The Door."

He turned. "What about it?"

"It’s shining again," Hessa said. "Another kingdom is coming through. Corvin’s already walking out to meet them." She paused. "But Almond, it’s the wrong color."

"What do you mean?"

"Every time I’ve seen it, it’s been the same light. The color nobody has a name for." Hessa’s voice dropped. "This one is black."