Chapter 96: Stripped

Selvane was fading.

Not quickly. Nobody would have noticed it who hadn't been looking. But I'd been looking, every morning, since the north sands. And on the fourth morning, when I came up the sea-tower stair with Tamar's wife's porridge, I could see the stove through her shoulder again.

Not as much as the first day. But again.

"I know," she said, before I could say anything. She was sitting by the window with Tessaly in its clay cup on the sill, watching the boats go out. "Don't look like that. I know."

"Harbor-right," I said. "The whole hall. I thought…"

"So did I." She smiled a little. "It helped. It helped a great deal, that first night. I felt it. Like a blanket." She looked down at the cup. "But one harbor isn't enough to hold a god up, Garrick. Not one who used to have four hundred. It's like trying to stand on one toe."

* * *

I went down and found Eleanor.

She was in the lower court with Davren, at the oak trestle where the stone floated in its washtub. They had a tuning fork, and the brass horn, and a great many sheets of paper weighted with teacups, and the look of two people who had been up most of the night arguing in whispers.

"She's going thin again," I said.

Eleanor put her pen down.

"We know," she said. "Davren heard it last night. In the stone." She looked at Davren.

"She isn't hurt," said Davren. He's an engineer; he says things the way he'd describe a bearing that's going. "She's unheld. Like a boat with every rope cut but one."

"I want to understand it," I said. "What he does. How. If we understood it, we could undo it."

"So does everybody," said Eleanor. "Selvane's tried for a hundred years." She hesitated. "But nobody's ever tried with you and Iselle in the same room."

* * *

We asked Selvane first. Of course we did.

She was quiet a long time. Then she said, "Yes. If it's you. If you'll stop when I say." And then, more quietly: "I'd like somebody to understand it. Even if it's too late for me. So it isn't too late for the third row."

We asked Iselle second.

She came through the Westmere arch at ten, with Saba's shuttle in her coat pocket ("for luck; Mama made me"), and listened to the whole thing on the tower stair with her hands open.

"I can't open another one," she said. "Not yet. I tried last night. On a knot. Just a knot in a bootlace." She looked embarrassed. "I slept for three hours afterward. In the chair. Mama put a blanket on me."

"You don't have to open anything," I said. "I just want to see what you see. When you look at a held thing. If you'll let me look with you. You can say no."

Iselle thought about it.

"Not borrow," she said.

"Not borrow. Just stand next to you while you look. Like reading over somebody's shoulder."

"All right," said Iselle. "Over my shoulder."

* * *

So we sat on the floor of the hut by the stove. Selvane on the cot. Iselle on the boards in front of her. Me beside Iselle, close enough that our shoulders touched. Eleanor in the doorway with her pen, and Davren behind her with the brass horn held to his ear like an old man at a concert.

Iselle put her hand on Selvane's wrist.

I put mine on Iselle's shoulder.

And I looked.

* * *

The first time I'd looked into Selvane, I'd seen the dark house. The long corridors. Hundreds of doors, every one held shut from the other side by a cold, patient hand.

This time I saw it the way Iselle saw it.

It was the same house. The same doors. But Iselle didn't see the doors. She saw the hands.

That's the only way I can say it. Where I'd seen a hallway of shut doors, Iselle saw a hallway of hands. One on every handle, from the far side. Thin and gray and gentle. And every hand was clenched. Not angry. Not hard. Clenched the way your hand clenches when you're asleep and dreaming you're falling, and you grab the blanket, and don't let go until morning.

I felt Iselle's breath catch.

"They're tired," she whispered. "Garrick. Feel them. Every one. They're so tired."

* * *

I followed one.

Just one. The nearest door, the nearest hand. I followed it back through the door, very carefully, the way I'd followed Malachar's voice back through the frosted link. Not far. Just far enough to see what was on the other side.

And there was a harbor.

Small. A fishing village on a gray coast, with a stone pier and a lamp on the end of it and a row of boats drawn up on the shingle. It was very early morning there. Somebody was mending nets. Somebody was hanging washing. A woman was walking down the pier with a loaf of bread under her arm.

She walked past the lamp at the end of the pier without looking at it.

She didn't put the bread down. She didn't even slow. She just went to her boat and climbed in and pushed off. And the lamp stood there on the end of the pier, cold and unlit, and nobody in the whole village so much as glanced at it.

And over all of them, over the whole village, the nets and the washing and the woman with the bread, there was a hand.

* * *

Not on them. Over them.

The way a mother puts her hand over a child's eyes in the street, when there's something she doesn't want the child to see. Not cruelly. Gently. Don't look, love. Don't look. There's nothing there.

That was it. That was all it was. A hand over the eyes of every person in that village. And they'd stopped looking at the lamp. And then they'd stopped remembering why there was a lamp. And then they'd stopped remembering there'd ever been anyone to light it for.

And somewhere a long way off, at the other end of that hand, holding it there, patient and tired and very, very strong, was the sea I'd felt in the iron room.

* * *

I came out of it shaking.

Iselle was shaking too. She'd let go of Selvane's wrist. She had her hands pressed flat together in her lap, the way you'd hold them to stop them doing something.

"He holds the remembering," I said. My voice didn't sound like mine. "Not her. Not the harbors. The people. He puts his hand over their eyes until they forget her. And when they've all forgotten, there's nothing left that knows what she's for."

Eleanor had stopped writing.

"How?" she said. "Garrick. How does he do that? To a whole village? Four hundred villages?"

"I don't know."

"Is it a ward? A binding? Is it written somewhere? Is there a mark?"

"I don't know," I said again. "I saw what. Not how. It isn't anything I've ever seen. It isn't anything any god I've ever stood next to has ever done." I looked down at my hands. They were still faintly gray at the fingertips. "It's just… holding. The way you'd hold a thing you'd decided you were never going to put down."

* * *

Selvane hadn't said anything.

She was looking at the little light in its cup on the sill.

"A hand over their eyes," she said at last. Very softly. "Oh. That's it. That's what it felt like. All those years. Not being forgotten. Being hidden." She closed her eyes. "I used to think they'd stopped loving me. The old woman's granddaughter. I used to think, if she'd really loved me, she'd have kept putting out the bread."

"She didn't stop," said Iselle. "Somebody put a hand over her eyes."

"Yes," said Selvane. "Yes. That's different. That's very different."

* * *

Davren tapped Eleanor's shoulder. He'd taken the brass horn away from his ear.

"Tessaly," he said. "Listen."

He nodded toward the cup on the sill. So we listened. Selvane put her hands around the cup and closed her eyes, and Davren held the brass horn to the clay, and after a while he said, slowly, as if he were reading it off a dial:

"A girl on the pier. She's put bread on the bollard. She's saying… For the lamp lady. And… I don't know why. Grandmother used to."

Selvane put her face in her hands.

"Ama," she said. "Her name's Ama. She was four the last time I saw her."

* * *

"So it goes both ways," said Eleanor slowly.

Everybody looked at her.

"When Iselle opened Selvane's hand," said Eleanor. "On the first day. It wasn't just the harbor that came back. It was the remembering. The hand came off their eyes. The girl looked at the lamp again." She was writing very fast now. "So it isn't that he's taken anything away. Not really. He's covering it. Holding it out of sight. And when the hold lets go…"

"They see her again," said Iselle.

"They see her again," said Eleanor.

* * *

"That doesn't help with the other three hundred and ninety-nine," I said. "Not today. Iselle can't open one bootlace without sleeping for three hours."

"No," said Eleanor. "But it tells us something else."

She put her pen down and looked at Selvane.

"If a god goes thin because everything she was for has stopped looking at her," she said, "then what holds her up is being looked at. Being remembered. Being known." She glanced at the window, at the north pier, at the town. "And that doesn't have to be an old harbor. Does it? It could be a new one."

* * *

Nobody said anything for a moment.

Then somebody knocked on the hut door. Three knocks. Not loud.

It was Sahrun.

I hadn't known he was there. He'd come down through the Westmere arch an hour before, with Elenos, because Elenos had decided that a rain god who'd once been held ought to meet a harbor goddess who'd once been held, and had dragged him. He stood in the doorway in his coat with the long-enough sleeves, looking embarrassed, with Elenos behind him.

"I'm sorry," said Sahrun. "We were on the stair. I heard." He looked at Selvane. "May I say something? You can say no."

"Please," said Selvane.

* * *

"I went thin too," said Sahrun. "In the tower. In the Quiet. I don't know if he was stripping me or only holding me. I couldn't tell the difference, from the inside." He looked at his hands. "I used to be the rain that came up the valley in the afternoon. On the plateaus. And the shepherds stood up when they saw me coming, and took their hats off. That was what held me up. Hats coming off." His voice was very quiet. "By the end, I couldn't remember what a hat was."

Selvane was looking at him.

"And now?" she said.

Sahrun turned his hand over. In the doorway, in the dry hut, a few drops of rain fell out of nothing onto the boards at his feet.

"Now there's a man called Tobias," said Sahrun, "who grows leeks in the kitchen garden at Greykeep. And every afternoon, about three, he looks up at the sky over the west wall and says, Well, Sahrun? And I come." He smiled, a little. "It isn't the plateaus. It's nine rows of leeks. But he looks up. Every day." He looked at Selvane. "That was enough to start."

* * *

Selvane didn't say anything for a long time.

Then she turned and looked out of the window, at the north pier, where her little brass lamp stood on the bollard, unlit in the daylight.

"Who's lit it?" she said. "These four nights? I haven't. I couldn't get down the stairs."

Nobody knew.

* * *

We found out at dusk.

All of us, on the sea-tower roof, in the wind. Selvane too, wrapped in two blankets in a chair that Tamar and I had carried up between us. Iselle beside her. Saba, who had come through the arch at four with a basket of bread because she had decided someone in this town should eat properly. Eleanor and Davren. Sahrun and Elenos. Carol, who'd come at the end with Ignatius.

At a quarter past six, as the light went, a little girl came down the north pier.

She was seven or eight, in a too-big knitted cap, carrying a tinderbox in both hands as if it were something precious. Behind her, at a careful distance, walked a tall young man in a pilot's coat, and behind him, at an even more careful distance, pretending to look at the boats, walked Master Goss.

The girl got to the end of the pier. She stood on her toes. She opened the little brass lamp, and struck the tinderbox, three times, four, her tongue between her teeth, and lit it.

Then she stood back and looked at it. And said something we couldn't hear. And went back up the pier to her father.

* * *

"That's Pim," said Tamar quietly. "Wil's girl. Goss's granddaughter." He watched them go. "Goss told me this morning. He said she asked him at breakfast the day after the council, Who lights the lamp for the lady now? And he said nobody, he supposed. And she said, Well, somebody has to." Tamar's voice was rough. "She's done it every night. Wil walks her down. Goss pretends he's checking the moorings."

Selvane didn't say anything.

She was looking at the lamp. And as she looked at it, I watched her hands, wrapped around Tessaly's cup in her lap.

I couldn't see the cup through them anymore.

* * *

"I wonder what she said," said Sahrun softly.

Elenos was already gone. Down the tower stair, two at a time, and out along the harbor wall, and we watched him from the roof, a small dark shape running in the dusk, catch up with the three of them at the foot of the pier, and stop, and ask. Pim's father bent down. Pim said something. Elenos nodded, very seriously, and said something back, and came running all the way home again.

"She said," he panted, at the top of the stair, "There. Now you can find your way."

* * *

I went home through the arch before the others, because Seraphina was on the east wall with little Uriah and I'd promised.

She was in the nook, with the baby asleep against her in a shawl, and the last of the light going purple over the river. I sat down beside her and told her all of it. The hands. The eyes. Ama and the bread. Pim and the tinderbox. She listened without interrupting, which she only does when something matters, and when I'd finished she was quiet for a long time.

"A hand over their eyes," she said at last. "That's worse than chains."

"Yes."

"Chains, at least, you can see." She looked down at our son. "I'd know if somebody put a chain on him. I'd burn it off before it closed. But if somebody put a hand over my eyes, and I stopped seeing him…" She stopped. "I wouldn't even know what I'd lost."

I put my arm around her. And as I did, without meaning to, the way you notice a sound only after it's been going for a while, I felt something.

West. A long way west. Past the river and the hills and the whole long fall of the land to the sea.

A small, steady, yellow light. On the end of a pier.

I sat very still.

"Garrick?" said Seraphina.

"Pim's lamp," I said. "I can feel it. From here."

She turned her head and looked at me. Westmere is the better part of a week's ride from Greykeep. Two weeks by barge, against the current.

"Since when?" she said.

"Since now." I looked at my fingertips. "Yesterday it was a mile. Today it's the coast." I didn't know whether to laugh. "Sera, I don't know where it stops."

Seraphina didn't laugh either. She took my gray-tipped hand and held it against our son's back, where he was warm and breathing and asleep.

"Then stop here," she said. "For tonight. Here's a good place."

So I did.

* * *

Aurelia came that evening, when she heard. She listened to all of it, in the little kitchen at Greykeep, with Saba beside her and Helena's kettle ticking on the hob. Eleanor told the part about the hands, and the eyes, and Iselle told the part about how tired they were, and Tamar told the part about Pim.

When it was finished, Aurelia sat for a long time without speaking.

Then she said, "Three hundred and eleven in a garden. Four hundred harbors with a hand over their eyes. And every one of the Accord thinks this is a Kethran matter. Something happening a long way off, to gods they never met." She stood up. "It isn't. It's what he'd do here. To every god in this kitchen. If he could." She looked at my father. "I want them to hear it. All of them. In one room. From Selvane, if she'll come. From Iselle, if she'll stand up."

My father nodded slowly.

"A full Council," he said.

"A full Council," said Aurelia. "Every god of the Accord. Every chair. I'll send tonight."

* * *

Mary wrote it at midnight. Saba sat beside her and watched every word, and asked what some of them meant, and Mary told her.

Selvane is fading again. One harbor is like standing on one toe.

Garrick looked over Iselle's shoulder. Iselle sees the hands, not the doors. The hands are tired.

Stripping: he does not take the harbors. He puts a hand over the eyes of everyone who lives there, until they forget her. Garrick saw what. Not how. Nobody knows how.

When the hold lets go, they remember. A girl called Ama put bread on the bollard in Tessaly. For the lamp lady.

Eleanor: what holds a god up is being known. It does not have to be an old harbor. It can be a new one.

Sahrun: nine rows of leeks. Tobias looks up every day. That was enough to start.

Pim, Wil's girl, Goss's granddaughter, lights the lamp on the north pier every night. She says: There. Now you can find your way.

Selvane's hands are not thin anymore.

Garrick felt Pim's lamp from the east wall at Greykeep. He does not know where it stops. Seraphina told him: stop here, for tonight.

Aurelia has called a full Council. Every chair.

And under that, the next morning, when Mary carried the book down to the sea tower and asked, in Selvane's hand, which none of us had ever seen, small and slanting, like the wake of a little boat:

Westmere. My second harbor.