Chapter 212: What's Left of Draum

It came for us at four in the afternoon on the third day, about thirty miles past the line.

I didn't know it was afternoon. You don't, inside a serpent. There's no sun. There's only Selvane's lamp and the breathing of the walls and the press of the sea. But Lexander keeps time. He has a watch the size of a duck's egg that Davren made him for his last birthday, and he looks at it the way other men look at the sky. He'd just said, "Four," and put it back in his coat, when Jörmungandr stopped.

Not the way he'd stopped at the line. Not slowly. All at once, like a horse that's seen a snake in the road. The floor jerked under our boots and threw half of us against the wall. Io caught Ignatius. Roderic caught Iselle. Kessavel caught Carol with one long arm before she hit the scales with her bad hand.

And the walls went cold.

Not the cold of the line, the old curious cold. A different cold. Wet. The cold of deep water that's never once seen the sun. It came through the scales in a single breath, and Nara's warmth in my chest flinched from it the way your hand flinches from a stove.

"Son?" said Loki.

The walls didn't answer. They tightened. I felt them close in around us, an inch, two inches, the whole passage shrinking, the way a man hunches his shoulders when he's hit from behind.

"Son."

"Something," said Jörmungandr. His voice came out of the floor strained and low, as if he were talking with his teeth shut. "Something's got hold of me. Outside. All around. It's cold." The walls shuddered, end to end, a ripple going back for miles. "It's squeezing."

* * *

The scales creaked.

I've heard a ship's timbers creak in a storm, at Westmere, the night Draum stood the sea up. It sounded like that. The whole passage groaning, slowly, louder, as something on the outside leaned on it. Selvane held her lamp up and in its light I saw the scales of the roof flex inward, just a little, like the skin of a drum when you press it with your thumb.

And between two of them, very slowly, a bead of water came through.

It ran down the wall. Black and cold. It fell on the floor of the passage between my boots with a sound like a coin dropping.

"No," said Loki. He had both hands flat on the wall, and I'd never seen his face like that. Not afraid. Worse. "No, no. Let him go. Let him go."

Another drop. Another.

"It's not attacking," said Selvane suddenly. She was standing very still with her lamp up, listening. "Listen. It's not trying to break him. It's trying to hold on."

I listened.

Under the creaking and the groaning and the drip of the black water, there was a sound. Not in the walls. Outside them, in the sea. Low and enormous and faint, the way you hear a voice through a wall in an inn at night. Words. Over and over. In a voice that sounded like the sea itself trying to talk, the way the sea sounds in a cave.

Where. Where. Where is the rest of me.

* * *

I knew the voice.

I'd heard it once before. On the night I picked up the sea at Westmere and carried it two hundred miles along a road of phoenixes and put it down over the twelve drowned islands. Draum's voice. Coming up to me from the bottom of his own deep, after he'd stopped fighting. Door-boy. There's something under me. It's warm.

And I'd closed the door on him. Kindly. The way you close a door on a room where someone's asleep. And I'd said: When you're ready, knock. And ask. Somebody will answer. Somebody always does.

"It's Draum," I said.

"It can't be," said Lexander. "Draum's on a rope. Pulling her ship. Two hundred miles west of here."

"Part of him is," said Kessavel.

Everybody looked at him. He was standing against the far wall, very tall, with his hand flat on the scales, and his eyes were shut. Listening.

"I held half of him in my hand," said Kessavel slowly. "At Westmere. I squeezed him through the crack. Like water through a fist." He opened his eyes. "When you squeeze water through a fist, some of it stays in the fist. And some of it runs down your wrist and drips off your elbow and never goes where the rest went." He looked at me. "This is the part that dripped off. What's left of him. The part that didn't go down into the deep with the rest. It's been out here alone. Lost." He listened again. "It's been following the furrow. Looking for him. And it found something big moving along the furrow in the dark, something that smells like its family." He looked at the walls. "It thinks your son is the rest of it. It's trying to hold on to him so he can't go away again."

Loki made a sound I've never heard a god make.

Another drop of black water fell. Another. The roof flexed further. Jörmungandr groaned, a long low sound I felt in my teeth.

"I can't fight it," said the serpent, very faintly. "It's family. It's so cold. It's so frightened."

* * *

I don't remember deciding. I remember Carol's hand on my arm.

"Don't," she said.

"I have to."

"You'll go out there. Into the sea. In the dark. With that." Her face was white. "I can feel you thinking it. Through the middle."

"I'll fold out in a cup," I said. "Like the cups for water. A fold's any shape you want. I'll take air with me."

"For how long?"

"Long enough."

Carol looked at me for a long moment. Then she let go of my arm, and took hold of my name instead. I felt her do it. The other end, light as a thread, pulling taut.

"I've got you," she said. "Go."

* * *

I didn't go alone.

Selvane came, because she held the lamp, and nothing goes out into the dark without the lamp. And Kessavel came, because he said it was his. "I squeezed it," he said. "I let it drip. It's mine." He didn't say it the way he used to say things, like a man under a chain. He said it like a man picking up a tool.

I put out the fold. Not a door this time. A cup. A round room of folded space, the three of us in it, and the air of the passage folded in with us, and the walls of it made of nothing at all except the place where here meets there. And I stepped us out through Jörmungandr's side, between two scales, into the sea.

* * *

It was dark.

I've never been anywhere so dark. Not the cave under Harl. Not the dark between places when I came apart. This was dark the way the inside of a stone is dark. Heavy. Black water pressing on the walls of my cup from every side, so hard I could feel it on the fold like a hand on a door. Cold. The bitter cold of the bottom of the world.

And in it, Selvane's lamp.

It lit a circle the size of a cart around us. Gold, warm, small. And at the edge of the gold, I could see the serpent's side, gray-green, huge, curving away into the dark above and below us like the wall of a castle.

And something wrapped around it.

I don't know how to tell you what it looked like. It was water. Only water. But it was water that had decided to be something. Colder and darker than the sea around it, the way a shadow is darker than the dusk. It was wound around Jörmungandr's body in coils of its own, a dozen coils, as long as streets, clinging. And where it touched the scales, they were white with frost.

And it was singing.

Not the Choir. Not anything like the Choir. The Choir sang names they'd stolen. This sang one word, over and over, low and lost and enormous, in a voice like a cave full of sea.

Where. Where. Where.

"Draum," I said.

My voice didn't carry. You can't shout under the sea. But it heard. The way the stone at Westmere heard. Not my voice. My name for it.

The coils stopped moving.

And out of the black water at the edge of the lamplight, something turned. Not a head. A sort of gathering. All the darkness of it drawing together into one place in front of us, the way water gathers into a wave before it breaks. And I felt it looking at us. At the lamp. At Kessavel.

And at me.

Door-boy, it said.

* * *

It remembered. Even this small lost piece of it, the part that dripped off Kessavel's elbow. It remembered me.

You closed the door, said What's Left of Draum. Kindly. You said knock.

"I did," I said.

You said somebody would answer.

"I did."

The gathered dark leaned toward the lamp. Toward me. The water around my cup pressed harder. I felt the fold strain.

I knocked, it said.

I didn't say anything.

I lay in the deep a long time. Over the warm. It was warm. I didn't drown anyone. The voice was very slow, like a man remembering something that happened to someone else. And then I was ready. And I knocked. Softly. The way you said. And somebody answered.

I knew. I knew before it said it.

Men, said What's Left of Draum. In ships. With black ropes. They heard me knock and they opened the door and they put the ropes on me while I was still saying thank you. The water around us went colder still. And they pulled. And I came apart. And the big part of me went with the ropes. And I stayed. And I've been following. Looking. Where is the rest of me.

Selvane made a small sound beside me.

I couldn't breathe properly. It wasn't the water. It was the other thing.

You said somebody would answer, said the voice, very simply. Not angry. Not anything. Just saying it. Somebody did.

* * *

Kessavel spoke.

He stepped forward to the edge of my fold, as close to the black water as he could get without going through, and put both his big gray hands up flat against the inside of the cup, as if he were putting them on a window.

"I'm the one who squeezed you," he said. "In the fist. At Westmere. I let you drip." His deep voice was steady. "I was in a collar. I'm not now. I'm sorry."

The gathered dark looked at him for a long time.

Kessavel, it said. You kept my oaths. When I was a sea and not a weapon. Every ship that swore by me. You held them.

"I did."

You were cold.

"I was," said Kessavel. "I'm warm now. Someone did that." He didn't move his hands. "You're cold. I know what that's like. I know exactly what that's like."

And I understood, then, what I was going to do. Not because I thought it through. Because I'd been standing on the north tower roof last Thursday with Adriana, wanting something so badly my hands shook, and saying no on top of it.

What's Left of Draum didn't want to drown us. It didn't want to break the serpent. It wanted the rest of itself. It wanted it so badly it had wrapped itself around the first big moving thing it found in the dark and held on, the way a drowning man holds on to whatever's nearest. And it was going to hold on until Jörmungandr broke, because it didn't know how to want something and let go at the same time.

Nobody had ever taught it.

* * *

"Draum," I said. "Listen to me. I'm answering now."

The water went still.

"I said somebody would answer when you knocked. And the wrong people did. That's my fault. I should have said I'll answer. I should have been there." I put my left hand up against the inside of the fold. My white hand. The one with Adriana's silver no in it, and Mother's gold around it. I couldn't feel a thing with it. I put it flat against the dark anyway. "I'm here now. I'm answering. I know where the rest of you is."

Where.

"West," I said. "On a rope. Pulling a ship. And on that ship, there's a girl. My wife. With fire in her hands." I took a breath. "And I think she's been cutting your ropes."

The black water went very still.

Yes, said What's Left of Draum, slowly. Yes. I feel it. Far off. Every day. One. Then later, another. It was quiet. Somebody very patient.

"That's her," I said. "That's exactly her."

Beside me, Selvane laughed. A small, wet, astonished sound.

"How many ropes?" I said.

The dark seemed to count. It took a long time.

There were twelve, it said. Now there are two.

* * *

Eleven days. Ten ropes. Nearly every day since the Friday when she flared and Ignatius felt her cut something big and old and hard. Every day since, working, steady, like chopping wood, and then going to the window to hold up the lamp. Three and three. I'm all right. I'm working. Come and help me finish.

She wasn't sitting in a room with a window being asked to stay.

She was cutting a god loose from the bottom of a ship. One rope a day. Where they couldn't see.

"Two," I said. I couldn't keep my voice straight. "Two more. And the rest of you is free."

Free, said What's Left of Draum, as if it had never heard the word.

"And you're holding on to the wrong thing," I said. "That's the serpent. He's a road. He's going exactly where you want to go. He's following your furrow, all the way to the rest of you. And you're squeezing him so hard he can't move." I kept my white hand flat on the dark. "Let go of him. Not of what you want. Keep wanting it. Want it with everything you've got. Just let go of him. And come with us. We're going the same way."

The dark didn't move.

I don't know how, it said. To want a thing and let go.

"I know," I said. "Nobody taught you. Somebody taught me four days ago." I pressed my hand harder against the fold. "Here. I'll show you."

And I put the fold out.

Not at the dark. West. Toward her. The way I had on the north tower roof eleven times with Adriana watching. I reached for Seraphina with everything I had, the coal in my palm leaning, the pull at the far end of it, her, and I wanted it, all the way, so badly it came up out of me like a spring. And I said no on top of it. Not now. Not yet. Because I want it.

And I pulled the fold back.

Slowly. Hand over hand. Still wanting her. Still in one piece.

I didn't know if it could feel me do it. I didn't know if a lost piece of a drowned god could learn anything from a man in a cup of folded air at the bottom of the sea.

But in my white hand, pressed flat against the dark, Adriana's silver light went bright.

I couldn't feel it. But I saw it. Silver, through my fingers, with Mother's gold around it like a ring. Shining out into the black water. And the black water saw it too. It leaned toward it. Toward the light. The way the candles in the Council Hall lean toward Aurelia.

Oh, said What's Left of Draum.

And it let go.

* * *

I felt it go. We all did. The coils unwinding from around the serpent, one after another, slowly, like a hand opening finger by finger. The frost on Jörmungandr's scales cracking and falling away in white flakes that drifted up past Selvane's lamp like snow falling upward. The terrible cold pulling back from the edges of my fold.

And Jörmungandr took a breath.

The whole length of him. I felt it in the water. One enormous breath, in, going back and back for miles into the dark. Like a man who's been held under coming up.

The gathered dark drew back to the edge of the lamplight. Not gone. Smaller. Quieter. Still cold, still black, still singing very faintly under its breath. But the word had changed.

Not where.

West.

"Yes," I said. "West. Come with us."

In front, said What's Left of Draum. I know the furrow. I'll go first. It was quiet. Ahead of the lamp.

Selvane looked at it for a long moment with her lamp held up.

"You can say no," she said, "but would you like to go with the lamp? Not ahead of it. Beside it. It's very dark out here to go alone."

The dark was quiet a long time.

Beside, it said at last.

* * *

I folded us back inside.

Carol caught me as I came through. I hadn't known I was falling. She caught me under the arms and sat down hard on the floor of the passage with me half in her lap, and held on, and didn't say anything, and her face was wet.

"Two," I said. "She's cut ten. There's two left."

"I heard," said Carol. "Through the middle. I heard all of it." She held on. "Idiot. Idiot. You didn't say you were going to teach it."

"I didn't know I was."

Loki was on his knees with both arms flat against the wall of the passage, his forehead pressed to the scales, and his eyes shut. He wasn't saying anything at all. The walls were warm again. Breathing again. Slow and deep and even, the long minute-breath, in and out.

"Son?" said Loki, into the scales.

"I'm all right," said Jörmungandr. Faint, but all right. "Father. I'm all right. It's only bruises." The walls breathed. "It was so frightened. I didn't want to hurt it. It was family."

Loki didn't say anything. He stayed kneeling there with his face against his son.

* * *

We went on at six.

Jörmungandr swam slower now, sore, the scales on his flanks still white in patches where the frost had been. But he swam. And alongside him, outside, in the dark, something went with us. You couldn't see it unless you folded a little window in the wall and looked out, which Roderic did every hour until Iselle made him stop. A long cold darkness in the black water, moving west beside us, keeping pace, close to the scales without touching them. Following the furrow. Following the lamp.

And very faintly, if you put your ear to the wall, you could hear it singing. One word. Over and over.

West. West. West.

At ten past nine the coal in my palm went three, and three.

I held it up. Everyone stopped.

And outside, in the dark, the singing stopped too.

Then the coal flashed three, quick, from the stone at Westmere, from a girl with her finger on a wick. I saw.

And outside the walls, very low, very slow, in a voice like the sea in a cave, What's Left of Draum said one word I hadn't heard it say before.

Somebody, it said.

Just that.

Then it started singing again.

* * *

From Mary's book. Monday, the rest of it. Mary's hand, small and steady, and at the bottom of the page Caitlin's count:

Sel's seventh tree. It snowed. She planted it anyway.

The boy said a new word. Thor took him up on the roof at noon. He looked west and said: boat. Thora sent the raven to the headland to tell Caitlin. Caitlin wrote it in the count.

4 p.m. Fenrir got up from the kitchen floor all at once and went to the west window and stood with his front paws on the sill and his hackles up and growled out at nothing for nearly an hour. Thora held the boy. Helena let him. At five he stopped, and lay down again across the basket, and put his chin on the boy's foot, and sighed.

4 p.m., at the same time: Loki's tea, which he left on the kitchen windowsill on Friday and nobody has moved, went to ice in the cup. Helena threw it out. She says it was the cold kind of ice. Not ours.

Caldris, 5 p.m.: the line is quiet. Nobody's crossed back. Whatever happened, it happened on the far side.

Uriah in the east-wall nook from four until six. At five he put his hand in his pocket around the half collar. At six he took it out.

9:10 p.m. at the stone. Three and three. Mirelle lit the lamp. Benjamin answered. The stone was warm. Davren says the stone hummed lower all evening, a second note under its own, as if something else out there were listening alongside it. He doesn't know what. He says it doesn't sound unkind.

Caitlin's count, Monday, second line under the first: still eleven marks. Home empty.

And under that, in a big blunt hand that has broken the nib in two places and kept going, the letters crackling a little at the edges as if the ink had been struck:

Thor. I'd like it noted that I sat on the throne at the top of the east stair from four until five today with my hammer across my knees and the boy asleep against my arm, and that the wolf growled at the west window the whole time, and I couldn't do one single thing about it from here. I'd like it noted that this is the worst thing anybody has ever asked me to do. I'd like it noted that I did it. I'd like it noted that at five the wolf lay down and sighed, and so did I.