Act II — First Ground

Page 9 — What Broke It

The second morning began with walking. We had looked at the broken coast from the landing place on the first morning, and the looking had not been enough. That is the whole of the reason I will give. A group that looks and is satisfied stays where it is. We were not satisfied. Five of us walked to the broken line of the coast, and the walking was the first real work of the new world.

Rumzuck went first. He walked the water's edge slowly, with the shield on his arm and his hand on the boss. That is how he walks. He did not carry a weapon. He had no other.

Behind him, Smackage a step back, his palm an inch above the black sand the whole distance. He listens before he trusts, and the new ground had not yet earned his trust. Zahlia at his shoulder, her face still up; the sky had been the same color since the impact, and she had not finished arguing with it. Wreckreate three paces from the line; he reads water before he trusts it, and this was water he had not yet read. And me in the middle. I have always walked in the middle.

The coast did not change for us. It did not part, or soften, or pretend to be less broken. The break ran along the water like a wall that had been cut. Black rock, and in the black, a line of cold light.

I will call it the seam, because it runs. It runs through the rock like a vein runs through stone. It does not end where the rock ends. I stood where the rock ended and the water began, and the seam went under the water, and the under was not a place I have been.

The light in the seam does not come from a place. In the old world, light had a source: a fire, a window, a thing that burned, a thing that could be named. This light came from no place, and it did not move. It was in the rock, and the rock was keeping it. I have seen light kept like that once before, in the old world, in a deep place where the water had never seen a sun, and the keeping had made the place holy. This place is not holy. I have stood in holy places, and the holy has a weight to it, and this had none.

Smackage had stopped at the water's line before I did. He put his palm flat on the black sand at the foot of the break, as he does with ground he does not know, and he stood there a long time. He did not take his palm up when we turned back. It was the only time since the first morning I saw him listen and say nothing to us about it. The ground had told him something, and the telling was not a thing he would spend on the second day.

I put my hand near the seam. Not on it. I have put my hand on a great many things that were not safe. The hand is my last word, and I keep it. An inch from the skin I felt the cold. It was not the cold of a well at the end of a long summer; that cold has a shape, and you can sit with it. This cold had no shape. It was the cold of a place that has not decided to be warm. I put my hand back.

Here is what I learned at the broken line. The rock was broken by a thing that was not a weapon. A weapon leaves a shape you can put your hand on: the claw, the burn, the mark, the print. I have stood at the work of things that had shapes, in the old world, and the shapes told their stories. This left no shape. It left a color. A thing that breaks a coast with a shape can be met; the meeting is the work of the old world, and the old world is not here. A thing that breaks a coast with a color cannot be met. I will find out what it is. I keep the finding, and the keeping is not done.

We came back to the fire in silence. None of us said what he had seen, because what he had seen was what I had seen, and there was nothing to say that the other had not already thought. The five of us sat around the fire, and the fire took the evening, and the color of the broken line sat in all of us until the third morning. We let it sit. Rumzuck was the first to speak, and he did not look up from the fire. The ground told him something, he said. He is keeping it. It was not a question, and no one answered it. A word that is not said yet is a word that can still be said right, and the right word for what broke this coast was not in my mouth on the second evening. It came on its own, with the name I had kept since before the four of them were in my life.