Chapter 864: The Empty Bag

"You got big," she said.

John knelt down in the dark beside her. He did it carefully, so that Ainen and Corvin could come down with him without letting go.

"I did," he said.

"You were so small." She reached out a gray hand and touched his face. Her fingers blurred against his cheek, but he did not pull away.

"You were the smallest of all of us. I had to carry you over the river at the third gate. Do you remember?"

"I remember."

"Did you get through, Johnny? At the end?"

"I got through."

"Good." She patted his cheek and took her hand back. "Good. I told you. Go quickly."

Then she turned away from him.

She turned back to the road, to the crowd of walkers going past in the pale light. She leaned out over the dark toward them, the way she had been leaning when they found her.

"Go east, my loves," she called. "Go quickly, when you come out. Before they take..."

"Stop," John said.

She stopped. She looked back at him, puzzled.

"Don’t tell them that," John said. "Please. Not anymore."

"But they’ll take it." Her voice was gentle and certain, the way you speak to a child who does not understand.

"At the Door. I’ve seen them do it. Every time a kingdom comes out, the people there take what it carried. They put it in the ground, and it’s gone."

Ainen went cold.

He looked at Corvin. Corvin was staring at the old woman with his mouth open.

"You saw that?" Ainen asked.

She looked at him for the first time. Her pale eyes went over his round face and his cook’s hands.

"Who is this, Johnny?"

"A friend," said John. "His name’s Ainen. And the rude one is Corvin."

"I’m not his friend," Corvin said.

"He is," said John.

"I see." The old woman nodded at Corvin politely. "You have a loud voice."

"I’ve been told," said Corvin.

Ainen let go of John’s arm with one hand. He kept the other on it, tight. With his free hand, he swung the cloth bag off his shoulder and set it down on the nothing between them.

"You carried the bread," he said. "John told us. So I brought some."

He opened the bag. The smell of it rose into the dark, warm and brown and ordinary.

The old woman looked down at it. She did not move.

Then she looked down at the bag in her own lap.

She opened it slowly. Ainen saw inside. It was empty. The cloth was worn so thin he could see the dark through the bottom of it. There was not a crumb in it. There was nothing at all.

"I gave the last of it to Johnny," she said. "On the road. Just before."

John did not say anything. Ainen felt his arm shake.

"Here," Ainen said. He broke a loaf in half and held it out. "It’s still a little warm. I baked it this morning."

She took it in both hands. She held it for a long time, as if she had forgotten what you did next. Then she lifted it and ate.

Ainen watched her chew. He watched her swallow. He saw it the way he had seen it once at the bottom of the gatekeeper’s heart. The bread did not go through her and away into the dark. It stayed.

Her edges sharpened.

It was only a little. But the blur at her shoulders and her hands went firmer, and her gray face had more face in it. Her eyes were still pale, but now they were blue.

"Oh," she said.

"That’s what food does," said Ainen. "It stays."

She ate the rest of the half loaf without speaking. Then she held the crust in her lap and looked at it.

"I’ve been so hungry," she said. "I didn’t know."

Ainen gave her the other half.

On the road beside them, the walkers went on past, toward the bright gap. Nobody called to them now. Ainen saw a few of them glance out into the dark, as if they had expected to hear something. Then they shrugged and kept walking.

"Grandmother," Ainen said.

It was the only thing he could think of to call her. She looked up as if it was the right word.

"Who told you east was safe?" he asked.

She thought about it. She chewed slowly.

"The kind one," she said. "He comes and sits with me, sometimes. Not here. Over there." She pointed off into the dark, down and to the left.

Ainen could not see anything there. "At the edge. Where the nothing stops. He can’t come all the way in. But he can come close enough to talk."

John had gone still.

"What did he tell you?" John asked.

"That the people at the Door were thieves. That they took every seed that came out." She smiled a little.

"He said that if I warned the walkers, if I sent them somewhere safe, he would help me find the road again. He said he knew where it was."

"He lied to you, lady," said Corvin.

She looked at him in surprise.

"He’s very kind."

"He’s a liar." Corvin’s voice was rough.

"Nobody takes the seeds. You plant them. You put your old home in the ground, and it comes up into stones and a tree, and then nothing can get in. I planted mine at the foot of that Door. Eleven thousand of my people live in it."

The old woman’s hands had gone still on the bread.

"Plant them?" she said.

"Plant them."

"Then the ones I sent east..."

She did not finish. She looked from Corvin to John. Then she looked at John’s face and kept looking, and Ainen saw her understand.

"Johnny," she said. "How many?"

John told her. He did it quietly and plainly. He told her about the Aurelians walking off alone into the grass, and the nine hundred and eighty-eight who did not come back.

She put the bread down in her lap.

She did not cry the way living people cried. She went gray again at the edges, the blur creeping back into her hands. She folded them over the empty bag and bent her head over them.

"I only wanted them to go quickly," she said. "So no one would take it."

"I know," said John.

"I sent them to die."

"Someone used you to do it." John took her hands, both of them, in his own. "Someone who knew exactly what you’d say if he told you the right lie. That isn’t the same."

"It’s the same to them."

John did not argue with that.

Ainen picked up the half loaf she had put down and pushed it gently back into her hands.

"Eat," he said. "Feeling bad on an empty stomach never helped anybody. Eat, and then come home with us."

She looked at the bread.

"I can’t see the road anymore," she said. "Not really. It’s been so long, Ainen. I can hear them on it. But I can’t see where it starts."

"I can," said John. "Hold on to me."

"You can only take two," said Corvin. "You said so. You’ve got two."

John looked at him.

Corvin swore under his breath. He shifted his grip on John’s belt, so that only his good hand held the leather. Then he held out his white hand, the one Kayla said might never be warm again, to the old woman.

"Here," he said. "Hold on to me. I’m holding on to him. That counts."

The old woman looked at the pale stiff fingers.

"It’s cold," she said, when she took them.

"It’s always cold," said Corvin. "Don’t let go."

They walked back along the edge of the road. John went first in his old footprints, with Ainen on one arm and Corvin’s fist in his belt.

Corvin came behind him, holding the old woman by the hand. She walked carefully, as if the nothing might change its mind about holding her.

Ahead, the gap was close now. The last of the walkers were going through it into the firelight.

"Here," said John. "This is where you step up."

He stopped at the edge of the pale road. It was right beside them, a faint line of light.

He stepped up onto it.

Ainen came with him. He felt the road under his boots, solid and real. Then Corvin, grunting, with his good hand still twisted in John’s belt.

The old woman stood alone on the edge of the nothing, holding Corvin’s hand. She looked down at the line of light.

"I don’t think it wants me," she said.

A voice spoke all around them. It was not small this time. It was huge and old, and it came from everywhere along the road.

"I never knew where they went," said the gatekeeper. "I am sorry. Come up."

The old woman looked up into the light. Her face crumpled.

She stepped up onto the road.

They came out through the gap at dawn, at the tail of a tired, frightened kingdom that had not gone east.

The frosted grass was under Ainen’s feet. The smell of his own stew was in the air. Someone had kept the pot going all night. Lily was at the foot of the Door with Almond, and Big D stood beside them with the book under his arm.

Behind Ainen, the old woman stepped out onto the grass.

She stopped there. She looked down at her feet, at the frost on the blades.

She looked up at the ring of white stones, and the people at their cook fires, and the pale blue shoot beside the walled fire, which had grown into a young tree of ice.

"Johnny," she said. "Is this what they do with the seeds?"

"This is what they do," said John.

She put both hands over her mouth.

Big D walked over to them. He did not hurry. He stopped in front of John and waited.

John leaned down and said something into his ear. It was short. It was only a name.

Big D opened the book. He did not turn to the back, where he kept the dead.

He turned to the front, to the pages where he had been writing the living since the day they came through the Door. He wrote it there, carefully, in his biggest letters.

"Welcome," Big D said to her. "You’re on the list."

The old woman took her hands away from her mouth. She looked at Big D, and then past him, out across the ring.

Then she looked north, and the color went out of her face.

"He’ll be so angry," she said. "He told me never to leave the edge. He said if I ever went back to the road..."

"What?" asked Almond.

"He said he’d come to the Door himself."

Hessa was already sitting at the edge of the fire with her hand over her eyes. She had been looking north since the old woman came through. Almond saw her go rigid.

"I can’t see the mountain," she said. "I still can’t see past where he shut me out. But I can see right up to it."

"And?" said Big D.

"Everything there is getting up." Her voice shook. "Every Ender between here and the mountain. Lords. Packs. Things I’ve never seen before. They’re all standing up at once."

She lowered her hand.

"And they’re turning around to face the Door."