Chapter 874: Carried

"It’s our child," said Lily.

Her voice was thin. The quiet was still on her, gray and heavy, and Almond could hear what it cost her to talk through it. But she did not lower her hand.

"It hasn’t been born yet," she said. "It’s never climbed anything. Not one step. It’s never fought, or made an orb, or ranked on any board." She took a breath. "And you can’t touch it."

The man stared at the soft light under her name.

"Everything else in me went gray yesterday," Lily said. "Everything I ever built. That’s what you end. Climbing. All the going up." She looked at him. "But it didn’t climb. It was carried."

"Carried," the man said.

"Through the Door. Down the road. Over this exact road you’re closing." Lily’s hand was shaking now, but she held it up. "Thirty-one thousand of us carried each other across, and I carried it. Nobody fell. It came through without taking one step on its own."

The man did not move.

"You said nobody makes it," Lily said. "This one made it. It’s the first one in my family who made it without falling once. Because nobody ever asked it to walk."

The road was quiet.

Almond lay on it with his cheek against the dim light. He could not get up. He could not want to. But he could hear Lily’s voice, and he held on to that the way he had held on to her hand in the Lull’s sleep.

The man looked at the line under Lily’s name for a long time.

"I went first," he said at last.

His voice had changed. It was still warm. But there was something cracked in it now, like a cup that has been dropped and put back together.

"Every gate. Every door. Every river." He looked down at his own gray hand, flat on the road.

"I went first so they’d know it was safe. And I never let anyone carry me. Not once. I thought that was what you did, if you were the one in front."

"You did," said the old woman softly. "You never let us."

"I fell first." He did not look at her. "Because I was in front, alone, where nobody could catch me."

Nobody answered him.

John took his hands out of his pockets.

He walked the three steps across the nothing to where the man crouched, and he crouched down beside him. He did not touch him.

He sat on his heels at the edge of the road, the way he must have sat beside him on a hundred nights, at a hundred gates.

"I copied the way you walked," John said quietly. "Hands in my pockets. Out in front. On my own." He looked at the road. "Took me a long time to stop. I walked alone for longer than you’d believe. I never let anyone carry me either."

"And now?"

John nodded back at the chain of them on the road. At Big D’s fist in Almond’s coat. At Corvin’s white hand, reaching back through the gap.

"Now a rude old man holds my belt," John said. "And a cook brings me soup. And I let them."

The man looked at the chain for a long time.

Then he looked at Lily’s hand, and the lit line under it.

He took his hand off the road.

He did it slowly, the way you take your hand off a sleeping animal so you won’t wake it. He lifted it and held it in the air for a moment, gray and crawling at the edges. Then he put it in his lap.

The road brightened.

It came back all at once, from the place where his hand had been, in both directions. It ran away into the dark, pale and strong and steady.

Behind them, through the gap, Almond heard a sound like a breath let out. It was the gatekeeper, everywhere at once.

The quiet went with it.

Almond felt it lift off him. The orbs warmed in his chest, one by one.

[Life Rank: F → D]

He got up onto his knees. Behind him, Big D sat up on the road and did not let go of his coat. Ainen was breathing hard, with his hand still flat on the small gold back.

Lily lowered her arm at last. Almond caught her before she could sag, and held her.

"Both fine," she said into his shoulder, before he could ask. "I can tell."

The man sat at the edge of the nothing with his hands in his lap. He looked at the bright road. He did not try to touch it again.

"I’ll call them home," he said. "The ones at the Door. The ones on the road. I’ll send them back north, where they came from."

"All of them?" said Big D.

"All of them." He did not look up. "I won’t promise you anything else. I’ve promised enough people enough things." He was quiet a moment. "But I’ll watch. From the edge. I’ll watch them come through, all of them, every kingdom that ever climbs up after you."

"And if one falls?" asked John.

The man looked at him.

"Then you’d better be there to catch it," he said. "Walker."

John almost smiled.

"I’ll be there," he said.

The old woman got up.

She stood slowly, on the nothing, with her empty bag in one hand. She looked at John. Then she looked at the man sitting at the edge of the dark, with his hands in his lap.

"I’m staying," she said.

John’s head came up.

"No," he said.

"Yes, Johnny." She said it the way she must have said it to him when he was small and wanted to go first over a river.

"Somebody has to sit with him. He’s been out here by himself longer than you looked for me. He never had anyone carry him." She looked down at the man. "Somebody should start."

"You’ve only just come back."

"And I’ll come back again. You know where I’ll be." She touched his face, the way she had when they found her. Her fingers were firmer now. They did not blur. "You walk beside that road whenever you like. Come and see me."

John did not say anything. Almond saw his mouth tighten, and then go still.

Ainen held out his hand.

"Your bag," he said.

The old woman looked at him, puzzled. Then she gave it to him.

Ainen turned it over in his hands. It was worn so thin that Almond could see his fingers through it. Ainen pulled his own cloth bag off his shoulder, the one with the bread in it.

There were two loaves left, and half of another. He put the old woman’s empty bag inside his own, so the bread sat in it, and the two bags together made one bag that would hold.

He gave it back to her.

"You carried the bread," he said. "So carry it. And if it runs out, call me. I’ll know."

The old woman held the bag against her chest. She did not cry. But her face did something that Almond would remember for the rest of his life.

"Thank you, host," she said.

She turned and sat down beside the man at the edge of the dark. She took a loaf out of the bag and broke it, and held half of it out to him.

He looked at it for a long time.

Then he took it.

John stood up. He looked down at the two of them, the old woman and the man who had gone first, sitting side by side at the edge of the nothing with the bread between them.

He put his hands in his pockets. Then, after a moment, he took them out again.

He stepped up onto the road.

Ainen took his left arm. Almond took his right, with Lily held against his other side. Big D’s fist was still in the back of Almond’s coat. And somewhere behind all of them, through the gap, Corvin was pulling.

"Home," said John. "Don’t let go."

They came out through the gap into the cold night air at the foot of the Door.

Corvin was flat on his back in the frosted grass. He still had both hands fisted in Big D’s belt.

Behind him, Almond saw forty Frosthold soldiers in a long line, each holding the one in front, all of them sitting down hard in the grass where the pull had thrown them.

Corvin looked up at John.

"Tea’s stewed," he said.

"I’ll drink it anyway," said John.

The Door stood above them, tall and dark, with its line of light down the middle wide and strong. At its foot, the small gold gatekeeper sat beside Ainen’s fire with its eye half closed, like a cat in the sun.

Hessa was sitting by the fire with her hand over her eyes.

"They’re turning," she said. "The tide. All of it. It stopped an hour ago." She lowered her hand. "It’s going north."

Nobody cheered. They were all too tired. Corvin sat up and poured a cup of black stewed tea from the kettle and held it out to John without a word, and John took it.

Lily sat down by the fire with Almond’s coat around her shoulders.

Then she gasped.

Almond was beside her before he knew he had moved. Kayla was there a heartbeat after him.

"What is it?" he said. "Lily, what..."

She caught his hand. She pressed it hard against her stomach, low and to one side, and held it there.

Under his palm, something moved.

It was small. It was only once, a soft push, like a knock on a door from the other side. Then it was still.

Lily was laughing and crying at the same time.

"It kicked," she said. "Almond. It’s never... that’s the first time."

Almond could not speak. He knelt there in the frosted grass with his hand on her and did not move.

Lily looked at the air in front of her. Then she went still.

"Almond," she said. "Look."

She held up her hand and showed him.

[Name: not yet given]

[Soul Weight: 5]

Under it, where there had been nothing before, there was a new line.

[Life Imprint: Everyone]