Act IV — The Sleeping Water

Page 23 — The Signal

The way we will know the lost when they are found.

A sign that is ours, that the world cannot fake. The sign was what the decision kept for us. The send needed it: the two of us who go east by the water need the sign, and the found will need it.

I cut it in the black rock at the water's edge.

The morning was the morning of the fifth day, and the fifth day was the day we gave the sign. The black rock was where the black rock goes — the edge where the water comes in, the place the coast kept for our part in the water.

And the water was still.

It did not go in and out at the edge. It lay flat and black from the shore to the horizon, and it had gone still in the night — the sleeping water. I had kept watches in the old world, and I had not seen water sleep. The stillness was the fifth morning's part in the world, and the world did not explain it.

I took the shard of the seam-stone, kept since the scar.

The shard came from the seam in the rock where the ogre stands, and the ogre did not take the shard. The ogre who holds the seam does not take the shard from the seam. I took it with the craft under the ribs.

The seam-stone is the material the world has given us that it cannot give anyone else.

The seam is what the world made with something the size of a god. The world gave us the seam-stone as the world gives everything on this coast — without looking up — but the giving it cannot repeat, because the making is what the world does not do twice. The black rock is the rock the coast has, and anyone can take the black rock. The seam-stone is the stone the world made with the seam, and the world cannot give it twice.

I cut it in the black rock at the water's edge.

I held the shard with the craft under the ribs. The shard did the cutting — the seam-stone on the black rock, the stone of the seam on the rock of the coast. The sound of it was a sound we had not heard.

Rumzuck stood at the place the ogre keeps, his hands folded over the grip, and he did not speak while the stone cut. When I set the shard down, he said: The ogre keeps the stroke. The water keeps the stroke. The two strokes cross, and the crossing is the sign.

Two lines, crossing.

The first stroke was the ogre's — the stroke that does not leave. The second was the water's — the stroke where the water comes in. The two strokes crossed, and the crossing was the sign's part in us — not the old world's crossing, the crossing of the roads, the place where two things meet while going to other places. This crossing was the crossing of the two strokes.

Under them, one circle.

The circle was the ring of the five of us around the fire — the ring we had kept since the first night on the broken coast. The circle was also the ring of the six of us in the white — the ring the crossing had kept for the six. I cut it with the craft under the ribs.

And in the circle, nothing.

The center left unmarked. The empty place. The one the world does not fill. The center of the circle was the kept place's part in the circle — by the fire, set a little back from the light, where we had not moved it since the white — and we did not fill it. The world does not fill the center. The world is not owed the six of us a welcome, and the welcome is what the center is.

The six of us, under the one place kept. That is the sign.

I stood at the water's edge and looked at it — the two lines crossing, the one circle, the nothing in the center. The still water went over the broken line without moving it.

When the lost are found, they will make the mark at their shore.

The found will make it as we made it — the shore where the current put them down-range, the shore the water and the ground gave us on the third morning. Two lines, crossing, one circle, and in the circle the empty place. They will cut it with the stone of the seam on the rock of the shore, as we cut it.

Because the world does not have the empty place.

The world fills the places it has. But the world does not have the empty place, and a world that does not have it cannot make a false one. The sign is ours — the world cannot fake it, because the world does not have the one thing the sign is.

We kept it for the kept place, and the kept place kept it for the one who is not here.