Act V — First Fire

Page 31 — The Keeping

The five of us kept our ground in the tundra and our distance from the water.

The warning had been said at the water's edge on the sixteenth morning, and we had taken it. The keeping began on the sixteenth, and it has not ended since. We kept our ground in the tundra, and we kept our distance from the water.

We kept the distance the way a ward keeps a line.

A ward keeps a line, and Zahlia's wards keep the Veil from reading us. We kept the distance the same way. The lake was east. We were west. And the between was the ground's gift to us — the first thing the new world gave us that it did not spend.

We measured it in walking: a day's walk to the water, and a day's walk back, and the between the length of a watch.

I walked it on the seventeenth morning: from the fire to the water's edge, by the tundra, the lid under my feet. The walk was a day — the day of the wrong world, the day that does not give its length to anyone who asks. I walked it back on the seventeenth afternoon, and the going-back was the same length. And the between, said in the plain voice: the between was the length of a watch — the four hours, the watch we keep at the fire.

We built the walls.

The walls of black rock, set dry, the way the coast's own walls were set — the coast's walls were the first instruction, and we did not have the arrogance to improve on them. The walls had been up since the sixth day, the way we had built a hundred camps in a hundred ruins in the last of the old world. The walls kept us in the tundra.

The walls kept the dark out, and the dark was the dark of the wrong world — the flat dark that does not read you, the dark that was ours because we had built it. And the walls kept the tundra in, as the coast's walls kept the coast in. We built the walls as the coast had built them, and the building was the first thing we did in the new world that the new world did not read us doing.

We kept the fire.

The fire in the center, the hearth where the hearth goes. The fire had burned since the first night on the broken coast, and the fire was what was ours. The new world gave us the ground, and the new world gave us the water, but the fire was ours, and what is ours is what the new world does not take. The fire burned through the year: low, with the dark where the dark goes, and the water flat where the water goes.

We sent two of us east on the fourth day and the ninth and the fourteenth, by the water, and the sending went around the lake, never to it.

The sending was our part in the finding. The finding is what we keep for the lost, and the lost is down the coast, and the sending goes down the coast. The sending went by the water, and the sending went around the lake, and the around was the keeping: the warning had said we do not send into the lake, and we kept from sending in, as we keep the kept place.

We kept our count at six.

I keep the count as the archmage keeps everything — in the keeping, not in the mouth. The white gave back five, and we kept the sixth in the kept place: in the seat by the hearth, back from the light, in the fire that burns for the found, in the sending that goes east on the fourth and the ninth and the fourteenth. Counting our six at five is finishing the finding, and we did not finish the finding. The count was kept at six.

Zahlia said it at the fire on the seventeenth night, in the plain voice, as the plain voice says a thing it does not need to prove: We keep the six. We do not spend the sixth. The kept seat belongs to the one who is not here, and the one who is not here is still one of the six.

We did not spend the between.

The ground had given us the between, and the giving was the first thing the new world gave us that it did not spend. We spent nothing else the new world gave us: the ground we kept, the water we read, and the between we kept back from the light. The between was the length of a watch, kept for the lake, and the lake kept it for the sleep.

The keeping did not end, because the finding does not end.

We kept the four keepings into the year — the distance, the sending, the fire, the kept place — and the year kept them. The wrong world gave the keeping to the found, the found to the seat, and the seat to the fire. And the keeping has not ended since the sixteenth morning.