Chapter 506: Three Hundred and Sixty-Five

Mother didn’t check the slate on the last morning.

She didn’t need to. She’d been counting on her fingers for eight days, under her breath, at the stove. Seven. Six. She’d counted at breakfast and at supper and once, Oona says, in her sleep. On the last night she sat at the long table after everyone else had gone up and didn’t count at all. She just sat.

Wren came down before dawn and changed it. She does it every morning. She wiped out 364 with the side of her hand, very carefully, and wrote, in her careful hand:

Morning: 365.

Then she put the chalk down and went and stood by the stove, next to Mother, and didn’t say anything. And Mother looked at the slate, and then she put her face in the tea towel. The one with the royal family on it. She’d said she’d stop counting and start crying, and she’d given everybody fair warning, and she did.

“There,” she said, into the tea towel. “Done. That’s done. I’m finished.”

She wasn’t. But it was a good start.

They were married on the plateau. At first light. That was Teva’s choice. Trevor said he’d marry her anywhere, and Teva said she knew that, and that it had to be the plateau, at dawn, because of the word.

Morning.

Because the first house says it there, every dawn, to the Overseer. Good morning. As if it’s never quite sure the light will come. It wished for it on its birthday and it’s said it every morning since. And Teva said she wanted the first thing anyone said, on the morning she was married, to be that. From the house. From the thing that learned it last, and means it most.

So everyone came up to the plateau in the dark.

I’ll try to say who was there. I’ll miss people. Mother says that’s all right; she says she’ll say the names later, all of them, and nobody will be left out.

Both families. All of them. Every Dask, every Calder, every Osei, every Friese and Windsor. Teva’s father, with his fourth slate under his arm, which he’d been told not to bring and brought anyway. Teva’s mother with the chipped brown pot Mother gave her, the one for passing. Teva’s grandmother on her stick, who had climbed the plateau herself and wouldn’t be carried, and great-grandmother Efua beside her, who had been carried, and said so, loudly, all the way up. Tovi, in grey, standing next to Sigmund. The quiet uncle who’s good with babies, with Queenie asleep on his shoulder.

The keepers came. All nine. In their long grey robes, very old, very straight, with the book. They’d never once left the hall under the hill for a wedding in the whole of the long record, Halvane says. They’d asked to come. They stood at the edge of the plateau in a row, with the book open on a stone in front of them.

Halvane. Ilas, in her chair, carried up by four walkers who’d come for the morning. Aune, with Tiri, and Corin beside Tiri, and Tiri’s ring on her hand with its iron bird.

Hearth. All of them. Rhiannon and Isolde, and Dinraal with small Bahamut on his shoulders, and Tiamat, and Aramaeis, and the three, and Cleopatra, and Asha, who was talking, and Eve, who was telling her not to.

Okafor, and Holt with his cap off. The General, in his good coat, with the tin box. Kyria with her blade on her back, and Kyrie beside her with her stick and her soft Andraste.

Konrad. Ingrid. Maura and Rory. Mira from Thole, and Brom. Orra, who’d rowed through the Arch Hall in her boat. Gath, in seven layers now. The Caddi grandmother. Hen and Dovi, from the long ward.

The Overseer, with his cup.

And the eldest. Under all of it. Warm under our feet, all the way up, the way she is when something’s going to happen that she’s been waiting a long time to see.

Aurelius stood in the middle of the plateau.

He’d been asked. By both of them. Trevor said it should be someone who’d been the head of something for a very long time and had never once wanted to be. Teva said it should be someone gentle. They both said Aurelius at the same time, at the long table, and then laughed, and Teva’s father wrote it on the slate.

He wore the imperial coat. The Chancellor’s. The one he hasn’t worn since Hearth came through the arch. His shield was on his arm. And just before the light came, very quietly, without saying anything, he lifted it, and a dome went up over the whole of the plateau, soft and clear, like the inside of a bubble, so that the wind that comes off the range at dawn went round us and not through us.

He didn’t say anything about it. Isolde says that’s what he’s always used it for, mostly. Keeping the wind off people.

Trevor stood on his left. Teva on his right. Trevor had his glass cup in his hand. Teva had her gold ribbon on her wrist, the one the General gave her in advance.

The sky over the southern range was going grey.

Aurelius spoke very quietly. Everyone heard him anyway. That’s the kind of voice he has.

“On Hearth,” he said, “when two people marry, someone asks them three questions. On Ister, there are no questions. There is only one word, and everybody already knows what it means.” He looked at the keepers, at the edge of the plateau, with the book. “I’ve been asked to do both. I’ll keep the questions short.”

He turned to Trevor.

“Do you know what you’re asking her for?”

Trevor looked at Teva.

“Every morning,” he said.

Aurelius turned to Teva.

“Do you know what you’re giving him?”

Teva looked at Trevor.

“Every morning,” she said.

Aurelius looked at both of them for a long time.

“And do you both understand,” he said, very gently, “that you can’t know whether the light will come? That nobody can? That you’ll have to say it anyway, every day, to each other, not knowing?”

They both said yes. At the same time.

“Then that’s the questions,” said Aurelius. “The rest isn’t mine.”

He stepped back. Out of the middle. And lowered his shield, very slowly, so that the dome went with it, and the dawn wind came across the plateau again, cold and clean, and the first edge of the sun came over the southern range.

Gold on the peaks first. Then down the slopes. Then onto the plateau.

And from the deepest crack, before anyone else had said anything at all, very surprised, the way it always is:

“Good morning.”

The Overseer, at the edge of the plateau with his cup, said, “Good morning,” back.

And then Trevor turned to Teva, in the first light, with his glass cup in his hand, and the light coming through it onto her face.

“Good morning,” he said.

And Teva said it back.

That’s all. That’s the whole of an Aldri wedding. It takes about as long as it takes to say good morning. I’d been told that for a year and I hadn’t believed it.

It’s true.

The eldest keeper wrote it in the book. Very slowly. In old Aldri. Then she looked up from the stone and said, in our language, which I didn’t know she spoke:

“Married.”

And then everyone on the plateau said good morning. All of us. At once. To each other. To the couple. To the sun. The walkers made the sound like a mountain clearing its throat. Kyria said it in old Hyrrani. Gath said it in the hill tongue. Orra said it to the river, which wasn’t there, out of habit. Small Bahamut said it very loudly from Dinraal’s shoulders and then fell asleep.

And the eldest, under all of it, sang. Very warm. Through every foot on the plateau. Dory says it was the same song she sang to every queen near the Reach, after Velle. We are still here.

Only this time, she said, there was another line. At the end.

Good morning.

Mother didn’t say anything. She was at the back, with her pot, and the tea towel over her shoulder. She’d been crying since the slate.

When it was over she went across the plateau, between everyone, very slowly, to Teva. And she didn’t hug her. She took Teva’s face in her hands, the way she does at the bottom of the hill road when somebody’s going somewhere, and looked at her for a long time.

Then she did the same to Trevor.

“Good morning, loves,” she said.

And then, very quietly, so only the three of them and I heard it:

“Your grandad would have liked this. Your other grandad. The one you’re named for. He’d have liked it very much.”

Trevor didn’t say anything. He couldn’t. Teva said it for both of them.

“Thank you,” she said. “For pouring for us. That first day.”

We had breakfast at the long table. All of it. The real one, in the kitchen, and two more Rory made for the occasion, out of the kitchen door and across the porch and down into the yard. It took the whole morning. Mother poured for everybody.

Then, at the end, she poured one more cup, and passed it to Teva’s mother, with the handle turned round.

And Teva’s mother poured for Mother.

Quenby had the plateau on the front. From a very long way away. The first light coming over the southern range, and a very small figure in the middle holding up something that caught it.

GOOD MORNING.

Imre’s made a set. The Wedding. Trevor with his glass cup, Teva with her gold ribbon, Aurelius with a tiny dome that lifts off. And a very small plateau, with a crack in the middle, that says Good morning when you press it. The first house heard about it. Dory told it. It asked if it could have one. Imre sent nine.

The keepers have had forty requests for a wedding on a plateau at dawn. They’ve said yes to all of them. They say a place isn’t a name. You can have the same place twice.

And Corvan sent a line, on the thin band, the next day.

Good morning.

Nothing else. He didn’t need to.

Mother started on the mothers the day after.

I didn’t know about it until it was mostly done. That’s how Mother does things. She went to them one at a time, the way Okafor goes to people, in person, with her pot.

She went to Ingrid first. In the narrow house with the blue door. Konrad was in the Asking Room with Aurelius. Ingrid was hushing a kettle that had decided to boil too loudly.

“We’re going away,” said Mother.

“Who is?”

“Us. The mothers.” Mother sat down. “All of us. Me. You. Maura. The Mom Squad. The wives. Teva’s mother. Her grandmother. Abena Osei. Whoever else I can find.” She put the pot on Ingrid’s table. “For four days. Somewhere with a beach.”

Ingrid looked at her for a long time.

“And the children?”

“The grandads,” said Mother.

Ingrid laughed so hard the kettle stopped boiling on its own.

I won’t put all of them down. There were a great many. But I’ll put some.

Maura said yes before Mother had finished. She said she’d been waiting forty years for somebody to suggest it and had stopped hoping.

Teshka said she’d never had a holiday in her life, and asked what you did on one. Mother said you sat down. Teshka said she’d try.

Kyria said First Blades don’t take holidays. Mother said, “Then you’ll be the first,” and Kyria looked at her for a long time, and then laughed, the Hyrrani way, which is very quiet, and said yes.

Andraste said she wouldn’t leave Kyrie. Not for four days. Not for one. Then Kyrie, who’d been listening from the door with her stick, came in and said, “Go, Mama. I’ll hold the stick,” and held it the loose way, the first way, and Andraste had to go and stand on the porch for a while.

Hana cried. Then she said yes. Then she cried again.

Risa said yes and then went straight to find Kesh to tell her she was in charge of the weather while she was away, which Kesh says is the first time she’s ever been told she’s in charge of anything and she intends to make it snow.

Luna asked whether the General could manage Elin and Trevor. Mother pointed out that Trevor’s just got married and Elin’s taller than Luna. Luna said yes, but the General.

Sera asked if Liam would be counted as a grandad. Mother said Liam would be counted as whatever he was told.

Aune said yes and that she’d fly them.

Rhiannon had already packed. She’d heard about it from Isolde, who heard about it from Ingrid. She had nine cases. She said three of them were for other people. Nobody asked which.

Isolde said yes, and that she couldn’t have anything with bubbles in it, and Rhiannon said she’d have Isolde’s.

Tiamat said she’d never fit in a mud bath. Mother said she could be small for four days. Tiamat said she’d never been small for four days in her life. Mother said then it was time.

Cleopatra said yes and asked whether there’d be somewhere to be seen. Mother said there’d be a beach. Cleopatra said that would do.

Asha said yes in about forty words, all at once, and then a great many more about the energy properties of volcanic mud, and whether the resort had high windows, and—

“Asha,” said Eve.

“Yes,” said Asha.

“Yes,” said Eve. “For both of us.”

Genny said yes. Garnet said yes. Abena Osei said yes and then asked whether great-grandmother Efua could come, because great-grandmother Efua is a mother too, and has been for longer than anyone. Mother said of course.

Great-grandmother Efua said she’d only come if there were birds.

Teva’s side was hardest.

Teva’s mother had never had a holiday. Not once. The Aldri don’t. They’ve spent eleven thousand years running, and before that, Halvane says, there wasn’t anything that wasn’t work. Teva’s mother sat at her own table in the narrow grey house in the third city with the chipped brown pot in front of her and listened to Mother explain what a beach was, and what you did there, and why.

“You sit,” said Mother. “In the sun. And somebody brings you a drink. And you don’t do anything.”

“For how long?”

“Four days.”

Teva’s mother looked at her.

“I don’t think I know how,” she said.

“None of us do, love,” said Mother. “That’s why we’re all going together.”

And Teva’s grandmother, from her chair in the corner, said:

“Are there gulls?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’m coming.” She banged her stick on the floor once. “Efua and I have been practising.”

So that’s how forty-one mothers came to be on the southern coast of Avalon for four days, at the plushest resort the Aldri built in the golden year. The long low white one at the very end of the beach, with the gardens Suri’s people water and the sand I made very fine and very pale so it wouldn’t stick to anyone.

And the children came to be with the grandads.

I’ll put down the mothers first. Because I wasn’t there, and they told it at the long table afterwards, all at once, for most of an evening, and it was the best evening I’ve had in years.

They lay in the sun.

That’s the main thing. All forty-one, in a row, on long white chairs on the pale sand, under the warm sun of the southern coast, with hats on. Doing nothing. For four days.

Mother says it took her until the second afternoon to stop wanting to get up. She says she’d lie there, and think, I ought to be pouring, and look round, and there’d be someone from the resort coming down the sand with a tray, and she’d have to sit back down. She says by the third day she’d stopped looking round.

They drank mimosas. Tiel oranges and the sparkling wine they make at New Hearth, in tall glasses, brought down the sand on trays. Mother had never had one. She had three on the first afternoon and told the young man with the tray that he had a very kind face and asked if he’d eaten. He hadn’t. She made him sit down and have a mimosa. Rhiannon says the resort staff went out of their way to bring Mother trays after that, just so she’d ask.

Isolde had orange juice. Rhiannon had hers.

They had the mud baths on the second day.

The resort has them in the hill behind the beach. Warm volcanic mud, from deep under the southern continent, in long stone pools. You lie in it up to your neck. It’s supposed to be very good for you. Asha told everyone exactly why, for the whole first hour, until Eve put a small handful of mud on top of Asha’s head, very gently, and Asha stopped.

Tiamat was small. All four days. Humanoid, and then, on the second morning, smaller than that, about Mother’s size. She lay in the mud next to Mother and said it was the first time in a very long time she’d been the same size as anyone else in a bath.

Kyria wouldn’t take off her armour. Then she did. Then she lay in the mud and fell asleep, and Teshka says Kyria didn’t wake up for three hours, and when she did, she said, very quietly, I’ve never slept in the daytime, and went back to sleep.

Teva’s mother lay in the mud between Mother and Maura and didn’t say anything for a very long time. Then she started laughing. She couldn’t stop. Maura says she laughed for nine minutes and nobody knew why, and then she said, I’m lying in mud, and laughed for nine more.

On the third night, Maura says, they sat on the sand after dark, all forty-one, with a fire Sera lit and nobody had to tend. And somebody asked Mother why she’d done it. Why the beach. Why now.

Mother didn’t answer for a while. She had her hat in her lap and her feet in the sand.

“Trevor promised me one,” she said. “A beach. When we were young. Before Lucas. Before they put us out of the cities.” She looked at the fire. “He said when the war was over he’d take me to the sea and I’d sit in the sun and do nothing for a week. And then the war was over, and they put us outside, and there wasn’t any sea that you could sit by any more.”

Nobody said anything.

“So I thought,” said Mother, “I’ve got forty mothers who’ve never sat down either. And I’ve got a son who made the sand.” She brushed some off her knee. “Seemed a waste not to.”

Teva’s mother, beside her, reached over and took her hand. Neither of them said anything else. Maura says they sat like that till the fire went out.

Great-grandmother Efua and Teva’s grandmother sat on the very end of the beach, side by side, in two chairs, with their feet in the sea, and shouted at gulls.

All four days.

The gulls on the southern coast had never been shouted at. Rhiannon says by the third day they’d learned to stay out over the water, a long way, and sit there, bobbing, looking offended. Rhiannon says there were about four hundred of them. She says the two old women got them all.

On the last afternoon, a very small gull came in to land on the sand right in front of them. Very young. On its own.

They didn’t shout.

They looked at it for a long time. Then Teva’s grandmother broke a piece off her bread roll and threw it, very gently, and the young gull ate it, and great-grandmother Efua said, quite softly, “That one can stay.”

The wives, Risa says, mostly lay in a row and talked about me.

I’ve asked what about. Risa says that’s not for me to know. Luna says it was very complimentary. Sera says it was mostly complimentary. Hana says she cried twice and won’t say why. Andraste says nothing at all and goes slightly pink. Aune says she was told several things about the early years that she intends to ask me about at a time of her choosing.

Quenby had them on the front. Of course they did. From a very long way away. A row of long white chairs on a pale beach, with hats, and a very large woman in very large sunglasses at the end who was quite clearly Rhiannon.

THE QUEEN MOTHERS.

Mother put it in the drawer with the tea towel.

And the children were with the grandads.

I was there for that. All of it.

Konrad made a sheet. Of course he did. On the first morning, before the mothers had even gone through the Arch Hall, he pinned a sheet to the kitchen wall with Voss’s wire. Every child. Every grandad. Where each child was meant to be, and when, and who was meant to be with them. It had forty-three children on it. He’d colour-coded it.

By noon on the first day, every line on it was wrong.

Konrad stood in front of it for a long time. Then he took it down, folded it, and put it in his pocket. Aurelius, who’d come up the hill road to help, put a hand on his shoulder.

“Two somebodies,” said Aurelius.

“Forty-three,” said Konrad. “There are forty-three of them.”

“Then we’ll need a bigger sheet,” said Aurelius, and took off his coat.

The General ran the naps.

Like drills. Every afternoon, at two, by the kitchen clock. He lined the small ones up in the yard in order of height, from Bram’s sister, who is the smallest, to Luka, and walked down the line with his hands behind his back and said, “Nap,” in his parade voice, and they all lay down on the blankets Rory had put out, in a row, and went to sleep.

Every one of them. Instantly. All four days.

Nobody knows how he does it. He says it’s command presence. Holt says it’s because the General’s voice is very boring. The General says that’s command presence.

Rory built a fort. Out of benches. In the north field. It had nine rooms, a tower, and a drawbridge that went up and down with a rope, and on the second day it had a flag, which Pell drew and the paper bird sat on top of. Teva’s father helped, and made a slate for it with the rules on. There were eleven rules. All his.

Kwame Osei dug a river. Through the garden. With Kwame. They didn’t mean to. They were digging a small channel for the children to sail boats in, and Kwame asked the ground very politely where the water would like to go, and it told him. The river went through the garden and round the house and out through the orchard and into the real river below the north field. It’s still there. Mother hasn’t seen it yet.

Taveth made the soup.

I need to say about Taveth. Kyria’s husband. He isn’t good at anything. That’s not unkind; it’s what Kyria says about him, very fondly, and what Taveth says about himself. He can’t fight. He can’t build. He can’t cook, except for one soup, which is terrible, and which he made for the Hyrran hollows a long time ago so that the children would smell something that smelled like a kitchen and feel safe.

Every child in the Hedge who’s ever had Taveth’s soup loves it. Nobody knows why. It’s the worst soup anyone has ever made.

He made it every night. In the big pot. In Mother’s kitchen. Which Mother has never once let him do.

Forty-three children ate every bowl. Every night. And asked for more. And Queenie, on the second night, sitting at the long table with her leaf, looked into her bowl for a long time, all the way down, and then just at the top, and then looked up at Taveth and said, very seriously:

“Leaf.”

Taveth didn’t know what it meant. Hana’s not there to tell him. I told him. He went out on the porch and stood there for a long time.

Gilgamesh brought bread. Crates of it. Every morning. Nobody asked him to.

Dinraal and Callum and Rowan and Liam and Toby took the older ones flying in the afternoons, in pairs, the way Aune does, and small Holt shouted the whole time and Bahamut slept on Dinraal’s shoulders through all of it.

Halvane sat in the wing with Ilas, who hadn’t gone, because Ilas said she was two hundred years old and had had her holiday already, in the hundred and three years she waited for Halvane, and she wasn’t going to sit on a beach with forty women who’d only been mothers for a few decades and listen to them complain.

Aramaeis read to the small ones, at bedtime, in a very deep voice, from The Asker, volume one. He did all the voices. He did Mother. It was very good. Mother would have hated it.

And Lucas Dask, the man on the hill, who asks stars to be steps, who stood in his mother’s kitchen and told the Prime of the Reach he’d be beside him bright in the dark, spent four days with forty-three children and nine grandads and was more tired at the end of it than he was after Velle.

I wouldn’t change one minute of it.

Dory helped. She wasn’t on the sheet. She’s not a mother and she’s not a grandad. She just came down every morning and took whoever needed taking.

On the last night, when the small ones were asleep in their row in the yard, under the stars, with the General standing over them like a sentry, she came and sat on the porch step next to me. With a cup. And the slate.

The small line. Under Morning. In her own hand. She’d been counting with Teva and Trevor all year.

It said 365 too.

She didn’t say anything for a long time.

“I said I’d notice,” she said, at last. “At the end. What I’d want. If I let myself.”

“And?”

Dory turned the slate over in her hands. She looked out at the yard. At forty-three children asleep in a row. At the General, very straight, with his hands behind his back. At Taveth on the porch, still standing where Queenie said leaf to him.

“I’d like to,” she said. “Someday. I don’t know who. I’m not looking. But I’d like to.”

That’s all she said. She rubbed out the number, very gently, with the side of her hand. And didn’t write a new one.

The mothers came home through the Arch Hall on the fifth morning. Brown, and sandy, and very relaxed, and carrying a great many bags.

Mother came through last. In a sunhat. With her pot under her arm. She’d taken it with her. She says she didn’t use it once.

She walked up the hill road to the house. She stopped in the yard. She looked at the fort, and the flag with the paper bird on it, and the forty-three children running at her across the grass, and the new river going through the garden and round the house and out into the orchard.

She looked at it for a long time.

“Who did that?” she said.

Kwame Osei and Kwame both looked at the ground.

“It’s lovely,” said Mother. “Leave it.”

Then she went into the kitchen, and smelled the pot on the stove, and turned round very slowly and looked at Taveth.

Taveth looked at the floor.

Mother went to the stove. She took the lid off the pot. She looked at the soup for a long time. Then she picked up a spoon, and tasted it, and stood there with the spoon in her hand.

“Well,” she said. “It’s terrible.”

“I know,” said Taveth.

“They ate it?”

“Every night.”

Mother put the spoon down. She put the lid back on. Then she turned round and looked out of the kitchen window, at the forty-three children, and the forty-one mothers coming up the hill road behind her with their bags, and the grandads on the porch looking very tired and very pleased with themselves.

“We’re doing that every year,” she said.

The stars said Not yet this morning. Four hundred and seventy-nine. Four more. Wren says one of them said it the way you’d say it from a long white chair, with a hat over your face.

Wren didn’t write Morning at the bottom of the slate this morning. There isn’t one any more. It’s done.

She wrote, instead, at the top, under the count:

Trevor and Teva: married.

Forty-one mothers: sat down.

Forty-three children: fed. (Badly.)

Days 11271–11305. Three Hundred and Sixty-Five.

Wren wrote Morning: 365, and Mother put her face in the royal tea towel: done; I’m finished. They married on the plateau at first light, Teva’s choice, so the first word on her wedding morning would be the house’s. Everyone came: both families, the nine keepers out of the hall under the hill for the first time in the long record, Ilas carried by walkers, Hearth, Okafor and Holt with his cap off, Orra in her boat, Gath in seven layers, Hen and Dovi, the Overseer with his cup, and the eldest warm underfoot. Aurelius in the Chancellor’s coat raised a dome to keep the dawn wind off. Do you know what you’re asking her for? Every morning. Do you know what you’re giving him? Every morning. Do you understand you can’t know whether the light will come, and you’ll have to say it anyway? Yes. He lowered the shield; the sun came over the range; the first house said good morning, the Overseer said it back, and Trevor said it to Teva with the light through his glass cup, and she said it back. The eldest keeper: married. Everyone said it; the eldest sang we are still here, and a new last line, good morning. Mother took their faces in her hands: your other grandad, the one you’re named for, would have liked this. Teva’s mother poured for Mother. GOOD MORNING; The Wedding set, Aurelius’s tiny dome lifts off, the plateau says good morning (the first house asked for one; Imre sent nine); the keepers allow forty plateau weddings, a place isn’t a name; Corvan: good morning. Then Mother went to the mothers one at a time with her pot: Ingrid laughed the kettle quiet; Maura had waited forty years; Kyria will be the first First Blade on holiday; Kyrie: go, Mama, I’ll hold the stick; Rhiannon had packed nine cases; Isolde no bubbles; Tiamat could be small for four days; Asha, Eve: yes, for both of us; great-grandmother Efua only if there were birds; Teva’s mother had never had a holiday, didn’t think she knew how; on the third night by Sera’s fire Mother said my father had promised her a beach before they were put out of the cities, and she had a son who made the sand; none of us do, love; her mother: are there gulls? Forty-one mothers on the southern coast at the plushest resort: long white chairs, hats, Tiel orange and New Hearth sparkling wine, Mother’s three mimosas and the young man with the tray made to sit; mud baths in the hill, Eve’s handful of mud on Asha’s head, Tiamat small for once, Kyria asleep in the daytime, Teva’s mother laughing for nine minutes at lying in mud; the two old women shouted every gull on the coast out to sea and let the youngest stay. The wives talked about me (mostly complimentary); THE QUEEN MOTHERS, in the drawer. With the grandads: Konrad’s sheet of forty-three, wrong by noon (Aurelius: two somebodies); the General’s naps by parade voice, instant, every one; Rory’s fort with Pell’s flag and Teva’s father’s eleven rules; Kwame Osei and Kwame’s accidental river round the house; Taveth’s terrible soup in Mother’s kitchen every night, and Queenie said leaf to him; Gilgamesh’s bread; Aramaeis did Mother’s voice from The Asker. Dory’s small line said 365: I’d like to, someday; I don’t know who; I’m not looking; she rubbed it out and didn’t write another. Mother came home in a sunhat, never used the pot: leave the river; tasted the soup: it’s terrible; they ate it? every night; we’re doing that every year. Four hundred and seventy-nine. Trevor and Teva: married. Forty-one mothers: sat down. Forty-three children: fed. (Badly.)