New data received from the system.
Thousands of shoulders leaned in the same instant.
On the balconies, on the bridges, at the doors of the arcades, each person stayed in place, and the shoulders leaned like wheat in a field under a single wind.
And from the end of a broken bridge above the drop, the first stone came out.
A knock.
Then the second.
A hand was gripping a stone railing. Its owner did not know when he had taken hold of it.
Under his fingers the stone was rough and warm.
The mist surrounds everything.
But now it is only the mist of this distance. The blue-gray that had been a mute screen had features now, and sounds: a road under a foot, passages and far-off steps, a rope pulled tight somewhere. It held regions, the Commons, a Harbor with piers, and places with names.
Moka walked beside Adam, carrying the broken vessel. The boy who had nearly gone down into a well at the Harbor, then nearly taken a road that carries only one.
And Adam, who used to wake on a bed under the shepherd’s watch, was walking now with a companion he feared for, and names he knew: Ameena, Mike. And Layan, marked Missing.
The questions were still many. He knew enough of them now to tell which ones had no answer yet.
They walked a while before either spoke.
Adam said, «Did you know that place?»
«It doesn’t look like a place at all.»
Moka took two more steps.
«A strange group, if you can call them a group.»
Then he went on, as if talking to himself:
«I don’t know many places outside the Harbor. I’ve wandered the edges of the Commons. I tried to get into the market once, and they stopped me.»
«Who stopped you?»
«Everyone I know. Ameena, Selim, Layan. Even the shepherd warned me, and he didn’t say why.»
He lifted the vessel a little. The key shifted at the bottom.
«How much farther? I ask as the one carrying the luggage.»
«I can’t tell the distance yet.» Adam looked ahead. «If we tried folding, we’d get there much faster.»
«That jump? I don’t know how to do it. And you personally weren’t at your best after it. Ameena told me.»
A different ability, maybe. Or limited to certain places.
Then Adam opened his other sight.
The gray thread was still ahead of them, thin, as it had been since they left. He did not know if it was the way back. He only knew it had not broken.
He closed it.
They walked on carefully. They did not know what might happen if they strayed from the thread Adam was following.
«It’d be a shame to sink into the mist on the way back. I’m counting on you.»
Moka’s words passed quickly through Adam’s mind, busy with the road. Then the trace of far-off movement reached him. A few steps later, he said, «We’re here.»
The Commons was being emptied, in good order.
On the way to the Harbor they passed the four regions where the survivors had settled since the flood. Their numbers had clearly grown.
Moka counted on his fingers, then stopped. «We’ve dimmed twice since we left.» He looked at the orderly lines. «And this doesn’t get done in two cycles.»
Adam crossed an empty spot. A moment ago it had been a path with fine gravel underfoot. Now it was a surface whose texture he did not know.
Moka pointed to another path beside it. At its end a man still sat on the ground, waiting.
«This way.»
«Why?»
Moka nodded in the same direction and did not answer.
At the edge of the green line, a man came the other way.
He was walking against everyone. In his palm he held a small green mark, the kind Adam had seen on the chests of those standing in line. This one had been taken off.
Moka stepped aside to let him pass. The man did not pass. He stopped in front of them and looked at the mark in his hand.
Adam said, «Do you need something?»
The man raised his head. His features were clear, his edges steady.
«They measured me three times.»
«And?»
«Each time something different came out.»
He looked at the line behind him. It moved forward in good order, one person at each pulse.
«They said the places are only for those whose readings match.»
Then he walked beside them for a few steps, and turned off alone, away from the line.
Adam looked back. Where the man had just been standing, the gravel had begun to lose its edges.
The violet chain crossed in front of them, all of it moving in one direction. Adam saw the faces in it, each face on its own. Then the chain slowed at a bend, and the faces grew harder to tell apart. When it moved again, each face was its own again.
Moka said, «Don’t stop while you’re among them.»
«Why?»
«I don’t know. But it looks like a trip, and we’re not passengers.»
To their left, a blue pocket held a single person. He was folding his edge in toward himself, like someone gathering his things.
Then he was not there.
No one left with him. The other blue pockets stayed occupied, each by its owner.
And from the direction of the golden light came a note, a clear ring, like the hum of a tuning fork struck in empty space.
Then it came a second time.
Adam stopped.
The two notes were identical.
He knew the voice.
He turned toward the gold line.
The people standing in it had begun to align. No one led them. A shoulder moved, and another moved a little after it, and then the gap between the two movements grew smaller.
Then there was no gap.
And then there was no one.
They did not walk, and they did not scatter. The space that had held a hundred people was empty in the same instant.
Adam opened his other sight.
Above the empty space stretched the road they had taken. Something he had never seen before, like a bridge carried by many together. It rose in a single curve that never changed, and its weave repeated: each part like the part before it, and like the part after.
If he walked it, he would not get lost.
And he would not know how far he had come.
Above the other spaces he saw things like it, thinner, beginning to form. Each led a different way.
He closed his other sight.
Moka said, «What?»
«I can see where they went.»
Moka looked at the golden space.
«I see an empty place.»
They walked on. At the edge of the Commons, Adam stopped.
The road to the Harbor was plain to see, wide, and busy.
And the golden road was plain to him alone.
He said, «The small one is there.»
Moka did not ask how he knew.
«And you’re going.»
«Yes.»
Moka looked at the road he could see.
«I’ll be at the rope.»
«I may be late.»
«The rope doesn’t move.»
Adam turned to him.
Moka had already started walking. He said without turning around,
«Come back while you’re still you.»
Adam walked the road he had seen. Steps formed under his feet, trembling.
Then the steps stopped trembling, and he began to hear his own footfalls.
He stopped, and the sound stopped. He moved his foot slowly to the next step. A light knock came from beneath it and echoed between two walls that had not been clear until he began to climb. He reached for the nearer one. Warm stone, a little rough, its grains uneven under his finger. He scratched one with his nail, and a short white line stayed.
Footsteps came from behind him. A man carrying a basket of tools. The stairway narrowed suddenly, and Adam took his hand off the wall to make room. The man passed and went on up. When Adam looked at the wall again, the white line was still there.
He raised his hand before his face. The small creases at the joints of his fingers were clear. He saw the thin edge of the nail, and the shadow it made on the skin. He bent a finger and straightened it. He had not missed these details when they were gone; now he kept looking at them until a woman climbing behind him nearly walked into him.
«The way is wider at the top.»
Adam apologized and climbed.
The walls opened at the last step, and he found what he had heard named before: the Fortress...
He stood in a square, and as far as he could see there was a city of pale stone inside a vast space lit by gold. Arcades above arcades, and stairways curving around hollow towers through which he could see deeper squares. Slender bridges crossed between the levels, and along their sides stood small pots with copper-colored leaves hanging from them. The leaves were still, but light moved in their veins, rising from the stem to the tips, then fading.
He could not tell where the light came from. It gathered under the domes, settled on the edges of the balconies, and came into rooms through narrow openings high in the walls. At his feet, the color of the ground split into shades of honey, ivory, and brown. It took him a moment to understand that the brown patches were shadows.
Shadows with sharp edges.
On the far side of the square, a woman was beating a rug over a stone parapet. Small specks rose from it, spread in the light like a cloud, then were drawn into a carving at the base of the parapet and vanished into it. She kept beating the rug until a deep red showed at its center.
The smell of polished wood reached Adam.
He followed it to an open door, where a man sat repairing the back of a chair. In front of him stood two finished chairs, and the third lay across his knee. He ran his palm along a short piece of wood until its curve matched the curve of the two pieces beside it. He raised it to eye level, pressed his lips together, then started again.
Adam wanted to stop at every door.
From somewhere high above the domes, a note sounded.
A note from a lower balcony answered it, then a third from a far tower. The note passed from level to level until it came down into the square.
The woman stopped beating the rug. The chair maker lifted his hand from the wood. On the bridges, on the balconies, at the doors of the arcades, people turned toward one direction.
Adam turned with them.
At the edge of the city, where the gold grew thin, lay an unfinished quarter. Towers without domes, and arcades open to the void. The way to it was a wide bridge that had not been finished.
At its broken end, people stood looking at the drop before them. Adam recognized some of them. They had been in the gold line at the Commons a short while ago.
The note came one last time.
And the people leaned.
On every level, in the same instant, the shoulders leaned toward the quarter. Each person stayed in place. Thousands of shoulders, leaning the way wheat leans in a field under a single wind.
From the broken end of the bridge a stone came out.
One piece, then the next. The pieces reached out into the void toward the quarter, each resting on the one before it. Adam heard stone meet stone, knock after knock, until the bridge reached the other side and settled.
The people at its end crossed. The first went slowly, testing the stone with his foot. Then those behind him hurried.
In the square, people straightened. The woman went back to her rug, and the chair maker to his wood. For them it was over.
Adam’s hand was on a stone railing. He did not know when he had taken hold of it.
Then two notes came from the new quarter.
Identical.
Adam let go of the railing and measured the distance to the bridge: the square, then two arcades, then the void.
Limited to certain places.
He fixed his eyes on the first stone of the bridge, and folded.
He arrived a step past his mark. Under his heel was the edge of the bridge, and beyond it the drop.
He raised his hand. The creases at his joints vanished for a moment, then came back.
The stone under his feet was new. Its edges were sharp, and its surface had not yet taken the color of the old squares.
At the end of the bridge, on the threshold of the new quarter, a woman hesitated. She held a bundle of cloth against her, and each time she tightened her grip her fingers sank into the cloth and came out the other side. She lifted her foot onto the stone, then set it back on the bridge behind her.
Adam saw Gabi standing beside the threshold. His snow-white hair looked clearer here, and Adam saw fine lines around his eyes that he had not noticed before. When the woman leaned forward, Gabi put his hand on her shoulder. The cloth settled in her arms, and she stepped over the threshold.
She stood looking at her fingers. They rested on the cloth now, and did not pass through it.
«Thank you.»
Gabi waved his hand. The woman stayed where she was a moment, then followed a man who had been waiting for her inside the quarter. The man slowed until they were walking side by side.
Adam nodded to Gabi as he passed. He saw the crack in his forearm, thin in the middle of all this clarity.
From inside the quarter the two notes came again.
Adam hurried.
A short arcade led him into a rectangular courtyard with identical doors all around it. Over three of its sides ran an arched roof held up by short columns. The fourth side was open to the void, and white light came in through it, making the doors on that side faint and hard to tell apart.
On the paving, under the open side, the builders had laid out five large curved stones, each as long as two men. Four or five people stood at each stone, looking up, to where it would settle.
The small one sat on a step in front of one of the faint doors, with a basket beside him full of yellow pieces like chalk. He handed a piece to everyone who passed. The worker took it and drew a circle on the stone, where he would put his palm.
Adam stopped at the entrance to the courtyard.
The small one kept raising his face to the people. He followed them with his eyes, and held out a piece before anyone asked. He kept the short pieces on one side of the basket and the long ones on the other. One fell from his hand, and he bent and put it back in its place.
Adam called to him.
The small one looked at him, then searched among the long pieces and chose one for him.
«The only place left is at the last stone.»
Adam took the piece, still looking at his mouth.
«You talk now.»
«Yes. Here they call me Twist.»
«How long have you been here?»
Twist thought. «Seven cycles.»
Then he pointed to the fifth stone, the one nearest the door where he sat.
«There. Before they start.»
At the fifth stone stood a thin worker and two other men. From among the stones a tall woman came over. She had tied her braid behind her head so it would not fall across her face when she looked up.
She said, «Will you work with us?»
«I came to see Twist.»
«You can see him from here.» She pointed to the fifth stone. «And we need one more at this stone.»
Adam held up the yellow piece.
«What do I do?»
«Draw your circle and put your palm in it. When you hear the first note, get ready. When you hear the second, lean with the rest.»
«That’s all?»
«The stone is heavy for whoever lifts it alone.»
Adam looked at the stone. A ton and a half at least. Four men. The lifting angle... Then he noticed the builder was waiting for him, and drew his circle.
The door where Twist sat opened, and he moved aside with his basket. An old woman came out with a wide board resting on her shoulder. The white light made one side of her face nearly disappear.
She said to the builder, «The opening is too high.»
Adam looked at the fifth stone. Near its top edge, the builder had drawn a small rectangle in chalk: the place for the window.
«Like the openings in the other arches,» the builder said.
«I don’t live in the other arches. I want to see the square while I sit.»
The thin worker bent over the stone, wiped the rectangle away with his sleeve, and drew it again a hand’s width lower.
«We could bring it down to here.»
The builder rapped the stone with a knuckle under the new rectangle. It sounded a little hollow.
«Here the stone thins over the door. We haven’t tried this arch. The other arch is standing in front of us.»
The worker said, «I know. But I think this one would hold too.»
«Can we finish it now?» the old woman asked. She shifted the board on her shoulder, and the door behind her shook until its handle vanished. She went to the door and propped the board against the top of its frame. The handle came back.
Adam asked her about the board.
«I put it over the door so I know which door it is. Since the flood, whenever I walk away from it, I mix it up with the next one.»
Adam looked at the row of faint doors. Above each of them was a bare space, and at the end of the row the wall itself began to fade into the light.
The thin worker stood and brushed the chalk off his knee.
«We build the arch we know, now. I’ll try the lower opening in the small courtyard, then come back to you.»
The old woman said, «Don’t forget.»
The worker wrote a mark on the edge of the board propped over the door. The old woman raised her head to study the mark, then stepped back to the threshold of her room.
The worker drew the rectangle again in its first place, and stood beside Adam.
Adam asked him, «Are you convinced the opening won’t work?»
«I still think it works.» The man wiped the dust from his fingers. «But it needs a roof before I can prove I’m right.»
Twist climbed onto his step and raised his face.
He gave a note.
The workers at the first stone put their palms in their circles.
He gave it a second time.
They leaned.
The stone rose from the paving without a tremor, and went up in a straight line until it reached the end of the open side, and settled there on the short column. The workers raised their hands with it as it rose, and kept them raised toward it.
Two notes. The second stone. It settled on the first.
Two notes. The third.
Among the workers at the fourth stone was an old man, the slowest of them to raise his hand. Twist waited for him before the second note. The fourth stone rose, and settled.
Adam’s stone was left.
He put his palm in his circle. The stone was warm, like the wall of the stairway.
The first note came.
When it rises, I should push my end first, so it doesn’t hit the fourth.
The second came.
Adam pushed.
The end of the stone under his hand jumped, and the other end stayed heavy. The stone rose tilted. The thin worker put his shoulder under the heavy end, and his knees shook. The stone scraped against the fourth, and white dust fell on their heads.
The builder said, «Let it go.»
The workers lifted their palms together. The stone came down slowly and settled on the paving in its place.
Adam said, «I ruined it.»
The builder wiped a smear of chalk from her cheek.
«We tried before you came. We’ll try again.»
Twist came down from his step and stood beside Adam.
«Don’t push. Lean with us when you hear the second one. I’ll show you.»
He put his small palm beside Adam’s, in the same circle. Then he leaned slowly, with his whole shoulder, toward the stone, the way the people in the square had leaned.
Adam leaned with him.
«Like that.»
Twist went back to his step and gave the first note.
Adam put his palm in his circle. On his right was the thin worker’s shoulder, and on his left the shoulder of a man whose name he did not know.
The second came.
He leaned.
He felt the two shoulders beside him leaning with him in the same instant, then the stone leaving the paving under his palm.
The stone rose straight. It came near the fourth, touched it, and went into its place. Along the arch, small hollows appeared at the joints, then each one opened like a folded leaf, and left in the stone a carving like fine palm fronds.
The shadow moved across the paving until it reached the old woman’s feet.
The light drew back from her face.
Adam saw her eyebrows, a deep line by her mouth, and a white strand that had slipped out from under her head covering. Behind her the door settled into the wall, and its whole handle showed. She reached for it, turned it, then let go and took the board down from the door frame.
The thin worker tipped his head back to study the high window. It was a narrow rectangle, and a thin column of light came through it and fell at the foot of the door.
The old woman said, «Now I have a shadow.»
She put the board aside. She went into her room and came back carrying a seat, dragged it into the shade, where the column of light fell at her feet, and sat down.
«Thank you, all of you.»
Twist had gone back down to his basket. He was gathering the pieces of chalk the workers had left on the ground, and sorting the long from the short.
Adam stayed where he was, his hand still raised toward his stone. Above him, the new roof joined the roofs of the three arcades.
The builder called a rest, but the old worker kept his hand raised. He needed longer than anyone to lower it.
Adam was about to lower his. The thin worker signaled him to wait.
Along the arch, the chalk circles began to fade, one after another. The last one went out above the old worker, and he lowered his arm. The other arms followed in the same instant, and the builder stepped out from under the arch.
The stone stayed above them.
The courtyard had one quiet light now. From a balcony above came the sound of dishes moving. Adam noticed a distant murmur, then closer voices: someone asking about a chair, the old woman calling the old worker to sit near her, and the builder trying to get the stone dust out of her braid, grumbling, «Is this dust going to stay in my hair forever?»
At the edge of the courtyard was a shallow stone basin with clear water in it. The thin worker bent and washed his hands. The yellow and white dust swirled on the water, then settled to the bottom.
Adam reached his fingers into the basin.
Cold.
He pulled them back quickly, then put them in again. A resistance he knew slid between his joints, light and fine, and rings spread around them, reached the rim, and came back inward. He kept watching the rings cross each other.
The thin worker said, «Let it dry on your hands. It goes on its own.»
Adam raised his hands. The cold stayed in them even after the water was gone.
He sat on the edge of the basin. From there he could see, through the short arcade, the new bridge, and on it two people who had stopped in the middle to talk. One of them leaned his elbow on the railing. There was no hurry in the way he stood.
Adam imagined knowing the way to that bridge. Having time to cross it, and stand, and then go back to a door he knew was his.
He kept watching until the two parted, each going his own way.
When he turned, a man was standing under the new arch.
For a moment Adam took him for part of the column; he was so still he seemed carved from the stone itself. The lines of the stone met in strict order and led the eye to his shoulders, and the carving above his head framed where he stood. His features were sharp and at rest, and his face was lit from both sides by a faint golden glow. Under his feet there was a shadow, but his feet did not touch it.
Adam studied that gap until the man raised his eyes to him.
«I’m Adam.»
«Seraph.»
Seraph looked at the arch, then at the door that had settled beneath it. The old woman raised her hand from her seat and pointed at the window.
«It’s still high.»
The thin worker said from beside the basin, «I’ll try the other one.»
Seraph answered, «The small courtyard is empty.»
The worker nodded to the old woman, and she settled back in her seat.
Seraph said to Adam, «Is this the first time you’ve carried a roof?»
«I didn’t know roofs could be carried.»
«The stone by the door is harder. It has an open edge.»
Adam looked at where the stone was. He wanted to tell him that Twist had helped him, but asked instead:
«How does all this last?»
Then Adam moved his eyes to the new bridge.
«At the Harbor, sometimes I have to look at a thing to be sure it’s still there.»
Seraph waited until Adam’s eyes came back to him.
«Here the people beside you know the same thing. When you tire, they still hold it.»
«And if I see it differently?»
«Your stone leaned today.»
Adam remembered the stone rising tilted, and the thin worker’s shoulder under its heavy end.
«Then I leaned with them.»
«And it became a roof you can rest under.»
Adam looked at the basin. The dust at the bottom had all settled.
Seraph asked him, «What do you believe?»
The old woman had closed her eyes in her seat. Beside her sat the old worker, moving his fingers one after another.
Adam said, «That whoever lives in the room has a say in the shape of its window.»
A faint smile appeared on Seraph’s face.
«And we heard it.»
«And she didn’t get the window she wanted.»
«And she got a room she can wait in.»
«Wait for what?»
«The chair maker in the square. Did you see him?»
«He has two finished chairs.»
«One of them belonged to a man who lived near the square.»
Seraph looked through the short arcade, toward the bridge, as if he could see the square from where he stood.
«One of its legs was shorter than the other three. The man fixed it many times. He’d sit, it would wobble, and he’d get up and measure it again. The people in the next rooms came to know the sound.»
«And did he get it right?»
«The last time he sat on it, it didn’t wobble.»
Seraph’s eyes stayed on the bridge.
«Then only the chair was left in the room.»
«Where did he go?»
«No one knows.»
Adam was silent. He saw the thin worker cross the courtyard with the piece of chalk still in his hand. He stopped by the old woman and pointed to the mark he had written on her board before he went on.
Seraph said, «And what did you do when your belief was costly?»
Adam’s eyes went back to the step where Twist sat. The basket was beside him, and he was wiping a yellow circle off the paving with his palm.
«I sent someone to a place he didn’t want to stay.»
Seraph waited.
«There were others who would have fallen.»
Seraph said nothing. Adam turned to him.
At last Adam said, «I came to see him.»
Seraph nodded once.
«He saw you lean with him.»
When Twist got up with his basket, Adam followed him into the shade of the arcade. He stopped by a man whose face Adam knew: the one who had held him by the shoulders and put him back under the roof in the flood. The man was fitting small pieces of stone into hollows in the wall, and bending now and then to answer something the boy said.
On one of the pieces Adam saw three small drawings. At the top, the figure of a child curled in on himself, the way he had arrived. In the middle, a door. At the bottom, two hands holding a piece of chalk.
«Is this his record?»
The man handed the piece to Adam.
«How he came, where his place is, and what he can do. If anyone comes looking for him, we find him.»
Rows of pieces like it ran along the wall, one for each resident. Adam ran his finger over Twist’s piece. At the mouth of the curled figure he found two short, equal lines: his two notes, as they had become.
He said to the man, «The day we put him back under the roof, I asked you if his other note would come back. Do you remember?»
«I remember.»
«Where is my question here?»
The man did not answer. He reached to an empty hollow in the wall and wiped away some dust caught on its edge.
Adam turned the piece over in his fingers. It held everything anyone would need to find Twist and put him to work. It did not hold that Twist had once wanted something else.
Twist raised his head to the stone in Adam’s hand and pointed to the last drawing.
«That’s my hand.»
He opened his palm beside the drawing, then closed it and opened it again, like someone trying something new.
«I couldn’t hold anything before.»
Adam kept looking at the open hand. He remembered it on the day of the flood, stretched toward the ground, trying to hold something it had left behind.
He gave the piece back to the man, and bent a little toward Twist.
«Moka’s waiting for me at the rope. He’s the one who said you wanted the other note.»
Twist looked at his hand, then at the arcade that led to the bridge. From here the end of the bridge could be seen, and beyond it the old square.
«Does he know me?»
«He knows what you wanted.»
Twist took a step toward the arcade, then stopped. He gave a short note, then the second. Adam waited for the difference, knowing what he would hear.
The two sounds came out identical.
From inside the courtyard another note answered. Twist turned toward it.
He said to Adam, «They’re calling me.»
And he went.
Adam went back to the courtyard. At the basin, the builder had stopped to gather her chalk. She pointed at him when she saw him.
«Tomorrow we build the tower at the end of the bridge. You’ve got a good arch now.»
Adam looked through the arcade. He saw the unfinished tower at the end of the new bridge, without a dome, open to the gold. One step forward put him under the arch he had built. His hands grew a little cold, and the feel of the water between his fingers came back to him.
He almost asked which stone he would stand at.
Come back while you’re still you.
Moka had said it at the edge of the Commons, without turning around.
From where he stood, he saw the man at the wall put Twist’s piece back into its hollow. It went in easily, and its face sat flush with the other pieces.
Adam stepped back.
«Not tomorrow.»
The builder put her chalk back in her basket.
«If you come back, you’ll find us here.»
At the end of the new bridge Mike stood with Gabi. In front of them a worker was pointing to a crack in the first stone of the bridge. The mist bent around Mike at the edge, and the rim under him grew clearer. He waited until the worker finished, then pointed him to a spot nearer the railing.
Adam crossed the bridge, then the square. At the first step of the stairway going down, he found Mike beside him.
They went down several steps before either spoke. The sound of their feet faded first. Then the wall lost its fine grains, and Adam was touching a surface he knew was stone without finding anything in it to scratch.
He looked at his hand. He could still open it, but the small lines at the joints were less clear.
Mike said, «You were up there a long time.»
«It didn’t feel like it.»
Below the road, the pier appeared. Adam could not make out the vessel yet, but he saw Moka sitting in his place by the rope.
«He’ll ask me what I saw.»
Mike said, «Tell the truth.»
Adam kept looking at his hand.
«Which truth?»
«That you felt admiration. That you were afraid. And that the admiration and the fear pointed the same way.»