Act V — First Fire

Page 28 — They Find Hollowmere

A day's walk east, by the water, and the coast gave way to the lake.

I said it at the fire, in the plain voice of a thing already decided: I am going down the coast. The sending was two of us. I will be one of the two, and I will go further than the sendings went, because the bones said east — they have said it since the second morning, and they do not repeat it.

The sending east had been made three times by then — the fourth day, the ninth, the fourteenth — and the three sendings had come back with the current and the current's own silence. We took it as we take the law.

The fourth sending went down the coast on the fifteenth morning.

The sun was up by the time the fire was lit, and the fire was low — the low the dark can see and the other side cannot, the low the old world taught us for the watch. I went by the water, the water on my left, as we had kept the water between the going and the coast since the fourth day. The water was flat that morning — flat in the flat of the wrong world. I walked it as I walk a coast I have to find a thing on — not fast, not slow. The air was thin, the thin of the coast's thin, but the thin was not Zahlia's.

The sand went out by the water's line — not all at once, but as the ground gives way to the ground.

The black rock went in from the coast — the rock our walls were set of, the rock the mark was cut in. The tundra came on the second part of the walk: the ground that Smackage reads, the lid under everything. I walked over the lid — the flat under, the under that did not end.

And then the coast gave way.

The lake was Hollowmere. I found it with the sight, and the coast owed the finding its lake.

The lake is a drowned place under a dark, still water. There are no shores as the coast has shores: the water came out of the ground without the courtesy of the bank. The water was flat. I will repeat it twice. Not calm — flat. The flat of a thing that has stopped being water and has not yet decided what to be instead. I have kept a watch on water that was calm; I have not kept a watch on water that was flat.

The light on it was silver.

The light came off the water flat, as the light comes off the water in the wrong world. I looked for the source of it. The craft under my ribs can find the source of a light. I looked at the sky, and the sky had no source in it — the sky of the wrong world, the old stars in the wrong places. I looked at the ground, and the ground had no reflection in it. I looked at the water, and the water had the silver in it. The silver came from nowhere I could find.

There was no wind.

I have kept watches in winds I will not name, and I have not kept one in more stillness than that morning. The air over the lake was still, the still of the wrong world, but the still was not the Veil's. The water did not ripple, and the tundra did not move.

I was at the water's line by midday, and I went back as I had gone — by the water, the tundra on my right, the lid under my feet.

I told us at the fire, in the plain voice of a thing already found: There is a lake. A day's walk east, by the water. The coast gives way to it. The light on it is silver, and the silver has no source I can find. There is no wind.

We came to the lake on the fifteenth afternoon. The fourteenth had been the day the name came to us, and the fifteenth was the day we came to the lake. The five of us came to it: Rumzuck in front, with the grip under his arm; Smackage with his palm a little off the ground; Wreckreate at the water's edge; Zahlia a little back from the water, her hands in her lap; and me behind them, where the craft keeps.

Wreckreate walked to the edge, and he stopped.

The water-reader does not walk to the water as we walk to the water — he walks to it as a man walks to a letter he has to read. He put his hand out — not in the water, out — and the hand was flat over the silver, as Wreckreate's hand goes flat when the reading is not done.

He said, very quietly, the only line that was left.

We do not go in.

The water-reader is quiet about a thing because the thing is small — he is quiet because the thing is the whole of the morning. The five of us took it as we take the law. Rumzuck's hands went back over the grip. Smackage put his palm flat on the tundra. Zahlia's hands were in her lap. And the craft did the thing the craft does when we keep our ground — it went quiet.

We stood at the edge of the lake on the fifteenth afternoon. The lake was east, and the between was the ground's gift to us — the first thing the new world gave us that it did not spend.