Chapter 111: Where the Moss Should Have Been

Chapter 111: Where the Moss Should Have Been

Alden and Dagna came with him. Nobody had asked them to.

"We’ve finished," Alden said, when Silas pointed out that the collection window was optional and they were allowed to go and sit down. "I want to see what’s so interesting about a corner."

"I want to see the dirt," Dagna said.

So the three of them walked the outer wall in the late gold light, past a boiler yard full of rust and a row of sheds with their doors hanging open. The east post was a folding table and a tired instructor named Harth, who checked their signed slate and waved them through the service-path gate with a reminder about the boundary rope.

The gate was iron, rusted open, half hidden by a bramble. Past it, the path ran along the inside of the wall and then turned, and the court opened up in front of them.

Silas stopped walking. Smaller than he remembered, and dirtier, but there it was. A square court of gray stone, walled on three sides. A row of empty glass frames along the north wall, most of their panes long gone. A low stone recess on the left where tools had once been kept. And down the middle, a channel cut into the paving, a hand deep and a forearm wide, bending once toward the east wall exactly where he’d known it would bend. Halfway along, a rope had been strung between two iron posts, with a painted board hanging from it: Restricted beyond this point.

He walked to the bend in the channel and looked down at the place where the moss should have been.

The stone there was bare.

There were no obvious scrape marks. A dry gray crust clung to the channel’s edge, like the dead felt he’d picked out of Pell’s bag. He crouched and pressed it with his thumb. It crumbled.

Nothing.

He stayed crouched there longer than he needed to.

Alden and Dagna had spent their free hour walking across a ruin because he’d made this sound worth finding. Pell’s carefully lined box waited beside his knee, empty. Silas rubbed the dust from his thumb and wished he had been a little less convincing.

"Is this it?" Alden asked.

"This was it," Silas said. His voice came out flatter than he wanted.

Dagna crouched beside him and looked at the crust. She didn’t say anything, which he was grateful for.

Alden looked along the channel toward the rope. "It goes on past there. Maybe it’s further in. I could—"

"No," Silas said.

"I meant along the rope," Alden said. "See if there’s anything visible from here."

"Sorry." Silas stood, embarrassed by how sharply he’d answered. "We can look. But if it’s over there, we can’t collect it. I’d rather check this side first."

"All right," Alden said. He left the boundary alone and came back to the channel.

Silas made himself breathe out slowly. He didn’t want to think about the game. He wanted to know why this patch of stone was dead, so he looked at it.

Above the bend, the glass frames on the north wall were almost entirely empty. He dimly remembered pale glass up there once, letting through a cool gray light. Now nothing stopped the afternoon sun. It fell straight across the bend, warm on the back of his neck even this late in the day. He put his hand flat on the stone beside the dead crust. It was warm and completely dry.

He knelt and put his fingers down into the channel itself. At the bottom, under a layer of grit, there was a thin skin of dampness. Not running water. Just seepage, the stone sweating faintly from something underneath.

I spent days keeping mine out of the sun. Look at this place.

The reference had said shade, damp, airflow. This spot had lost two of the three.

He looked along the channel on the open side of the rope. Halfway to the boundary, where the channel ran close against the east wall, was an old stone ventilation hood: a heavy stone lip jutting out from the wall over the channel, with a dark grilled vent beneath it. A cooler breath of air came from that direction. He felt it on his face when he turned.

"Dagna," Alden called from the left. "There’s a pump in here."

Dagna went to look. Alden had his head inside the old tool recess.

Something stirred in Silas’s pocket.

"Can I come out?" Nim whispered. "They’re not looking."

Silas glanced at the recess. Both of them had their backs to him. "Quickly. And not past the rope."

The air beside his hip shimmered, and Nim dropped onto the paving, shook himself, and sneezed. He looked around the court with an expression of profound distaste.

"It smells old," Nim said. "Old and wet and wrong. Not like a proper place in spring." He sniffed the channel. "Nobody’s lived here nicely for a long time."

He started to trot toward the rope.

"Nim," Silas warned.

"I’m looking," Nim said.

"Look this side," Silas told him.

Nim gave him a long look and came back to his boots, tail stiff with offense.

Silas walked slowly along the channel toward the stone hood, and let a thread out, thin and level, the way he’d practiced in his room.

Out here it was faint and difficult. He felt Nim, quick and bright at his ankle. Behind him, Alden and Dagna were still talking in the recess; he kept listening in case either came back. And then, near the hood, low down against the wall, he felt something else.

It was small and cool, moving a little along the stone and then back, the way the visitor at home drifted along the windowsill, except that this one stayed close to the wall, as if the wall were the important part.

He couldn’t tell what it was, but he wanted a closer look. For a moment he forgot about the moss.

What’s so good about that spot?

He crouched beside the hood, put his cheek almost to the paving, and looked up underneath the stone lip.

The underside of the hood was lined with thin stone facing, slabs no thicker than a book cover, some of them cracked and loose in their mortar. The vent behind them breathed cool air. The channel ran right below, keeping everything faintly damp. The overhang kept the sun off completely.

And along the underside of the facing, tucked back where no one standing would ever see it, the gray growth was not gray at all.

It was silver.

Fine pale strands ran along the stone in a thick band, dozens of them, catching what little light reached in there and holding it. More than he’d grown on his windowsill in two weeks. More than he’d dared to hope for.

Silas laughed, quietly, flat on his stomach on the paving.

"Alden. Dagna. Come and look at this."

They came. Nim vanished back into his pocket a heartbeat before they turned.

"Get down low," Silas said. "Under the hood, along the edge. See the pale threads? That’s what I was looking for."

Alden lay down on the stone without hesitation. Dagna sighed and did the same. There was a pause.

"Oh," Alden said.

"Huh," Dagna said, which from her was a lot.

The evening bell rang from the direction of the main gate.

Instructor Harth appeared at the court entrance a minute later. "Collection window’s closed. Out you come."

"Instructor." Silas got up, brushing grit from his front. "There’s something under the hood here I’d like to collect. Can I mark the location and come back in the morning? Our assignment’s complete."

Harth walked over, crouched, looked under the hood briefly, and grunted. "Open side of the rope. Fine. Tag the post." She handed him a strip of marking cloth. "Short return, first thing, before your team packs. I’ll be here."

"Thank you," Silas said.

He tied the strip to the nearest post. Harth was already walking back toward the gate with Alden and Dagna behind her.

Silas lingered a moment longer. He crouched again and reached up toward the edge of the silver band, just to feel how firmly the facing sat in its mortar.

The small cool presence under the hood contracted. It drew in hard, sharply, toward the thickest part of the growth, like a hand closing into a fist.

Silas took his hand back.

He stayed very still, feeling it slowly loosen again.

Something was living with the moss he’d come to take.