Act IV — The Sleeping Water

Page 21 — The Argument

Go looking, or stay.

Our first real fight, and it was not about the enemy. It was about who we were willing to lose.

It came at the fire, as our fights come — not as a question but as a fact.

The evening was the evening we had: the bread broken, the water carried in, the fire where the fire goes. The five of us around it, as we were around it on the third morning — Rumzuck at the place the ogre keeps, his hands folded over the grip; Smackage on the ground, his palm on the sand; Wreckreate at the water's line; Zahlia a little back from the fire, her hands in her lap; and me at the fire, where the craft is. The kept place was where the kept place goes — by the fire, set a little back from the light — and we had not moved it since the white.

Rumzuck said go.

The ogre said it as the ogre says everything — which is to say he had already finished the argument and was waiting for the rest of us to catch up. We do not leave. We are the line, and the line does not leave. If one of us is down the coast, the coast is where we go. He did not look at the kept place while he said it. The ogre did not look at the seat. He looked at the fire, and the fire took the words as the fire takes everything. His hands were folded over the grip, as they had been folded all the evening — the hands of a man who had already gone.

Wreckreate said go — but east, by the water.

The but was his part in the answer. He stood at the water's line with his hands at his sides — the east was the water's part, and he said it without leaving the water. Go, he said, but east, by the water, in a way that keeps the water between us and whatever the water had. He had said east on the third morning, and he did not take it back: the current ran east, and the running was the water's part in the where. The two of us who went would go by the water.

He said it without kneeling. The water-reader does not give the water's part standing, and we saw that in him.

Zahlia said stay.

She said it a little back from the fire, as she says everything — with her hands a little raised. The air around her went thin, and the thinning was the Veil's part in the argument. The Veil reads us, she said, and a camp that moves is a camp that is read. I do not want to be read by something that is not a person. The reading was the Veil's, kept for us since it first read back — the wall that reads back, the hand that was not hers. A camp that moves is a camp that is read. She did not look at the water while she said it: the water's go and the Veil's stay were the two parts we had to choose between.

Smackage said the ground would tell us when the time was, and the time was not yet.

The ogre said it without getting up — the palm flat on the sand, the head down, the lid under everything holding the ground's part in the answer. The ground did not give east again. The ground said not yet — as if the ground held the answer, and would give it when the ground was ready to give it.

I listened.

It is what I do, and the listening is what does not lie. I sat at the fire with the craft under my ribs. The craft does not argue. The craft listens. The four answers stood in the fire — Rumzuck's go, Wreckreate's go-but-east, Zahlia's stay, Smackage's not yet — and the fire held them while we did.

While I listened, I did the thing I have done a thousand times.

I held the shape of the argument. The shape is what the craft sees when the craft has the four answers in it. The shape had a place in it that did not fit, and I did not show them where it was. The four answers were our four parts, and the shape had a fifth part in it — the part the kept place gave it — and the fifth part had no place in any of the four.

The four of them argued the rest of the evening.

Rumzuck and Wreckreate took the go — the ogre's go and the water-reader's water, the two parts that kept the coast between them and us. Zahlia kept her stay. Smackage kept his not yet. The fire held the four answers, the fire that does not answer, the fire that takes the words as the fire takes everything.

And the keeping was mine alone.

I did not show them where the place did not fit. We did not know that the shape had a place in it that did not fit, and I kept it as we keep the kept place — by the fire, set a little back from the light.