South

Silas Meredith came out from under the wagon.

It seemed he had been there the whole time the fighting lasted. His clean clothes were blotched with sand and oil. One arm of his glasses was bent.

“Good morning. I am most relieved to find you all unharmed.”

“…You were here, were you.”

“I was. The whole time. Beneath the wagon.”

“All night?”

“All night, sir. I am the recordkeeper, and if the recordkeeper dies, no record remains. Hence I concealed myself. A rational decision.”

Willa snorted beside him.

“Ohhh. Rational.”

Silas tried to bend the crooked arm of his glasses back with a finger, failed, and put them on as they were.

“If you are going south, I shall accompany you.”

“No,” Marlow said.

“It is Central's instruction.”

“When was that instruction given.”

“On the day the load was packed.”

Marlow had nothing more to say.

Along with fifty-eight days' worth of seawater, this man's company had been loaded onto the wagon from the start.

＊

By noon it was settled who would go.

Marlow. Mirabel. Drag. Roslyn. Silas.

And Jorun and Yuran.

“There's no reason to take you two,” Drag said.

“We know the road.”

The two mouths, front and back, answered at once.

“There's no reason you won't betray us either.”

Yuran, the one facing backward, answered.

“There is. Two years ago, the ones who joined us were Republic doctors. General Kale watched. He didn't stop it.”

Jorun, facing forward, added it with his eyes still shut.

“Go back and we get used again. Don't go back and you use us. If we're used either way, we'd at least like to pick who uses us.”

Drag looked at the twins for a while.

Then he cut the ropes.

Nobody asked Willa.

Before anyone could ask, she was on the wagon.

“Get off.”

“Nope.”

“Twenty-nine days this time. One way.”

“I know. I was listening.”

“It's the Republic. A country that keeps people like livestock.”

“I said I know. That's why we're going, isn't it? They took One! I shook his hand!”

Marlow started three arguments and threw away all three.

Three years with this kid had taught him one thing. There are no words that get a child off a wagon when she climbed on for somebody whose hand she shook.

＊

Harlan and the nineteen miners would head for the outpost in the west.

They couldn't use the wagon. There was only one. The miners would walk. Four of them had broken bones, so the rest would carry them in shifts.

“Any message for Brin,” Harlan asked.

“Tell him to stop letting that dog eat boots.”

With the unburned side of his face, Harlan smiled one more time.

“I'll tell him. Word for word, just like that.”

＊

They were to leave the next morning.

That night, there was a sound.

The first to notice were the cattle that turned the winch. All four of them stood up at once in the middle of the night. They snorted and backed away.

Then the chain rang.

The chain that held the cage. After they had hauled One up they had taken the cage off, but the chain had been left hanging down in the shaft. Three thousand eight hundred meters of chain.

It went taut.

By the time Marlow got there, three miners were clinging to the winch.

The thick shaft of the winch was leaning toward the hole. The iron stakes holding it were working their way up out of the ground, a little at a time.

The chain was being pulled downward.

“Something's caught down below!” one of the miners shouted.

“Caught on what!”

“No idea! Maybe a rock shifted in the water!”

One stake pulled free.

The winch dropped and tilted.

Drag came.

He came, and without a word raised his pickaxe and brought it down on the chain's coupling. Twice. Three times. On the fourth, the coupling split.

The chain ran into the hole.

The sound was enormous. Three thousand eight hundred meters of iron scraping past the pulley as it fell into the pitch-black hole.

The sound went on a long time.

Then it stopped.

There was no sound of it hitting the end. It simply stopped.

＊

For a while nobody said anything.

“…Water pressure, most likely,” Harlan said. “It came up nine meters. The weight changed. That's what pulled the chain.”

The miners nodded. They had the faces of men nodding because they wanted to nod.

Marlow looked for Mirabel.

She was sitting on the stone at the base of the tower.

She wasn't laughing the way she always did.

She was looking at the hole. With the metal eye and the brown one both. In the metal eye that never blinked, the lamp at the top of the tower showed as a small reflection.

“…You know something,” Marlow said.

Mirabel didn't answer right away.

Then her face came up all at once, and she smiled her usual smile.

“Hmm? Water pressure, right? The foreman said so.”

“I'm asking because of your face.”

“My face? It's cute, isn't it.”

“Mirabel.”

It was the first time he had used her name.

Mirabel's eye widened a little. Only the brown one.

“…Kiddo, that's dirty.”

That was all she said, and she stood up.

“Let's go. Early start tomorrow. South is a long way.”

Her voice was half a beat brighter than usual.

＊

They ran south for three days.

Two horses pulled the wagon. Mirabel didn't ride in the bed; she walked alongside. Walking, and keeping pace with the horses.

On the third day, the color of the earth changed.

Red soil turned black.

On the black soil, grass was growing. The first grass in two months. Willa leaned out of the wagon bed and shouted.

“Grass! It's grass, Marlow! Green!”

“I can see that.”

“How are you so cold about it?! It's grass!”

The farther they went, the taller the grass stood. To the knee. To the waist. Over their heads.

And then it began to glow.

They noticed it in the evening, as the sun was going down.

Inside the stems of the grass ran a thin thread. The thread was dimly glowing. White light. The same color as the light in Central's corridors.

Marlow had the wagon stopped and broke off one stem.

Something spilled from the break.

Small black grain. Much smaller than half a rice kernel. About the size of a sand grain.

“…It's grain.”

“Correct,” Mirabel said. “South of here it's nothing but grass that grows on grain. Not water.”

“There's such a thing?”

“There is. The Republic planted it. Grass that needs no water. Wheat that needs no water. Cattle that need no water.”

Mirabel looked out over the sea of glowing grass.

“They're remaking all of it so it can live without water. The grass, the cattle. People, before long.”

Willa dropped the grass she was holding.

＊

That night they lit no fire.

There was no need. All the grass around them was glowing.

Drag was sitting apart from the wagon, alone.

Marlow sat down next to him.

“Thinking about your brother.”

“…That man always said he wanted wings.”

“Wings.”

“When we were children. He'd look up at a griffin and say he wanted that. Orcs can't fly. He didn't care for being born a creature that couldn't.”

Drag flicked one blade of glowing grass with a finger.

“Well, he got it. On somebody else's wings.”

“…Going to hit him? When we get there.”

“I don't know.”

It was the first time Marlow had heard Drag say I don't know about himself.

“I'll make him give the wings back. That much I've decided. They belong to a lion.”

Far off, something called.

It was not an animal's voice. It was not a bird's, either. It was like a bell rung underwater.

Jorun and Yuran looked up at the same moment.

“It's here.”

The two voices landed exactly together.

“What is.”

“The border watchdog. The Republic's.”

Out beyond the sea of glowing grass, the grass could be seen going down in a single line.

Coming this way.

Fast.

Mirabel stood up, yawning.

“Ahh. And I was getting hungry.”

End of Chapter 29