Act II — First Ground

Page 10 — The Forbidden

I know what prismatic means.

I have known it a long time, and I will tell you the kind of knowing it is, because the kind is the one thing the tenth page does not let me put down lightly. It is not a knowing you get. It is a knowing that gets you. You do not take it up and carry it the way you carry a word; it takes you up and carries you the way a current carries a stone that is too round to stop. I have known it since before the five of them were in my life, and the knowing has cost me things I will not write down, and the not-writing is the one the record keeps.

Prismatic Dragons carry the power of several gods in one body, and the size to match.

I want that plain, and I want it at the front of the page, because the front is where the plain has to stand for the camp to build on it. Several — not one, and not two. One god's power is a thing a body can keep. Two gods' power is a thing the body keeps for a time, and the time is the one thing the body is not allowed to have. Several — three, and four, and the count I will not give, because the count is the one thing the prismatic does not let you have — several gods' power in one body is a thing no body is allowed to keep, and the not-allowing was the one law the old world kept longer than its gods.

The word is not a word.

I have spent a great deal of the old world trying to make it a word. It is a keeping. The body keeps several gods the way a well keeps a flood — not all of it, not at once, but enough that the keeping changes the shape of the thing that keeps it. And the keeping is the one the world does not let go of. The truest word on the tenth page is that the prismatic is not a thing that breaks a world. The prismatic is a thing the world does not let go of after it is broken.

They are forbidden here.

I said here, and I will not say everywhere, because the everywhere is a thing I do not know, and the not-knowing is the one the record does not let go of either. I have known the word prismatic in a world where it was not forbidden, and the knowing there was a knowing of a name in a book, and the name in the book had the decency of a thing that could not reach you. Here the word is not in a book. Here the word is the color in the seam — the one thing the world has put where a name would go, because the world has no alphabet for what the prismatic did to this coast, and a world that has no name for its wound is a world that has not yet decided to be the one that carries it.

The seam in the rock is the proof.

I looked for the shape first, and I will tell you that plainly, because the plainly is the one thing the record owes the proof. A prismatic is a body, and a body leaves a shape. I have stood at the work of things that had bodies, and the work had the shapes of the things that did it — the claw, the burn, the mark, the print — and a shape is a story a thing tells about itself after it is gone. I looked for the shape on the broken line the way you look for a word in a letter you do not want to be in it. I looked with my eyes, and the eyes found no shape. I looked with the hands, and the hands found no shape. I looked with the craft, the way the craft looks — not at the rock, at the keeping under the rock — and the craft found no shape either.

The proof is the color.

Not the shape. The color. The seam runs in the color of cold light, and the color is the one that stays, and the staying is the proof. A shape is a thing that was left, and a color is a thing that is kept. The thing that broke this coast did not leave it a mark. It gave it a color, and the old world's weapons never did that — the old world's weapons took, and the taking was the one thing the old world understood. This world's wound is not a thing that was left on the rock. The wound is the rock. The wound is the color the rock keeps, and the proof is the one the world does not let go of either.

I said it to the four of them.

I want the record to keep the saying, because the saying is the work of the tenth page. We were at the line where the water comes in — the line is the work of the ninth page — and the four of them were where the four of them stand when the record has to be said: Rumzuck with his hand on the boss, looking at the place where the rock meets the water; Smackage with his palm an inch above the sand, listening to the ground the way he listens before he trusts it; Zahlia with her face up, because the sky had not changed its color; Wreckreate at the line where the water comes in, three paces from the rest of us; and me in the middle, holding the shape of the five of us, and the shape was the one thing the saying would not change.

I said it in the plain voice. I want the record to keep that, because the plain voice is the one voice the camp has to be able to build on, and the camp is built on the voice and not the voice on the camp. I have said words in other voices, but the word on the tenth page was said the way a record says it, and the saying was the whole of it:

The coast was broken by a prismatic. The prismatic is forbidden here. And the forbidding is not something the world does — it is something the world is.

I said the three sentences, and the three sentences stood in the dark the way the three sentences had stood in the old world — the first sentence is the proof, the second sentence is the law, and the third sentence is the one you do not say twice, because the third sentence is the one the world answers with.

The fire burned. The five of us were around it. The dark came in from the water, and the dark was the one thing the night owed the camp.

Wreckreate said the only thing that was left to say.

He had not come back from the water when the saying was said — the three paces had become a standing, and the standing was the one thing the water had put between him and the rest of us. But the standing did not keep him from the saying. He said it when the third sentence had stood in the dark and the dark had not answered it, and the not-answering was the moment he chose, because the choosing of the moment was the one thing the water-reader does that the rest of us never learn to do.

Then we are not the first to be dropped here.

He said it the way he says everything, and I want the record to keep the way, because the way is the one thing the tenth page keeps of the water-reader. He said it the way a man says a thing he had finished before he was in the room. He had already finished the argument — the one the saying had opened and the dark had not closed — and he had finished it somewhere in the three paces between the water and the rest of us, while the rest of us were still standing in the third sentence.

He was waiting for the rest of us to catch up.

I caught up. I will tell you that plainly, because the plainly is the one thing the record owes the tenth page. I caught up the way the rest of the camp caught up — not at once; we caught up the way a line of people catches up when the front of the line has walked into a room they did not know was there, one at a time.

The camp stood on the saying when the third sentence had landed, and the standing was the whole of the second night, because a camp that stands on a saying is a camp that will wake on the third morning, and the waking is the work of the eleventh page, and the eleventh page is owed the wood.