Act V — First Fire

Page 33 — The Sending

The sending goes east on the fourth day, and the sending goes by the water, and the sending goes around the lake.

The sending went on the fourth day, and the ninth, and the fourteenth. Each time we sent two of us east, by the water, around the lake, and never into it. We kept it for the lost. The lost was down the coast, and the sending went down the coast.

We sent two of us east.

The pair we sent was who the finding needed. The one who went kept the craft under the ribs; the one who stayed kept the fire. We did the going on the fourth and the ninth and the fourteenth, and we kept the fire the rest of the days.

They went out before the light, and they came back before the dark. The road ran down the coast, and the coast ran around the lake, and the pair kept the water on their left the whole way. They did not stop at the lake. They walked to the edge of the coast's reading, and they turned, and they walked back, and the going and the coming-back were the same length. The same length was the proof the coast had not moved on them.

The sending did not carry a message to the lost.

We did not send a word to the one down the coast. The sending carried the found back. What the pair brought was what they had read on the way: the ground they had read, the water they had passed, and the sky they had looked up at. The found went back to the fire, and the fire kept it.

The sending gave back the found.

The found was not the lost. What the pair brought back was the reading — the ground, the water, the sky — and the lost stayed down the coast, where the finding kept it. We held the two apart. The found we could keep. The lost we could not. That difference was the whole of the keeping.

The sending went by the water.

The water was the lake, and the lake was east, and the sending went by it, never to it. The warning had said we do not send into the lake, and the sending kept the warning. The pair went around the lake, by the water's edge, and the edge was the limit the warning had set.

The sending went around the lake.

The around was what the straight could not do. The straight would have gone to the lake and broken the warning. The around went by the water and kept the warning. We did the around, and the wrong world did not read us doing it. We did it with the world's answer still in our hands, and we did it without looking back at the lid.

We answered the world with the going.

The world had given us its answer — the lid, the flat light, the no-answer — and we answered it with the two who went, the one who stayed, the thread that did not close, and the fire that kept the found. We did not answer the world with a word. We answered it with the going. The world gave its answer once, and we kept it, and the keeping was the answer we gave back.

The sending was the thread between the found and the lost.

The thread carried the found at one end and the lost at the other. It did not close, and it did not break. We kept the thread, and the keeping kept it, and the keeping kept the finding alive in the fire.

Zahlia said it at the fire on the fourteenth night, in the plain voice: The sending is the thread. It carries the found to the fire, and the fire carries the finding to the lost. The thread does not close, and the thread does not break. It is what we keep that the world does not spend.

The sending went east on the fourteenth, and the going was the third.

The first going was the fourth day, the second the ninth, the third the fourteenth. The three goings had not ended since the sixteenth morning. The sending had gone by the water, and around the lake, and the around had kept the warning, and the warning had kept the lid down.

We kept the count in marks on the rock by the hearth. A mark for the fourth, a mark for the ninth, a mark for the fourteenth, and the nineteenth we held in our hands, not yet set down. When a going came back, we set its mark, and we counted the goings, and the counting kept the finding in the keeping.

The sending would go east on the nineteenth, and the going would be the fourth.

We kept the count: the fourth, the ninth, the fourteenth, and the nineteenth. The count was what we kept for the finding, and the finding was what we kept for the lost. The thread carried the finding between the two keepings, and the thread did not close, and the thread did not break. The thread would carry the finding east on the nineteenth, and the going would be the fourth, and the around would keep the warning, and the keeping would not end.