Sera's Farewell

Venn woke in the sixth hour, and the first thing he did was sneeze.

It was a tremendous sneeze. It shook the furs, and the pillow, and the wooden bowl at his elbow, and sent a pair of ravens flapping up from the root. Everyone in the clearing jumped. Zoe, who had been dozing on the ground at his side with her head against Archie's knee, shot upright with a yelp. Jin dropped his wrist-pad. In the middle of the commotion, Venn sat up, scrubbed at his nose with the back of his hand, and said, in a clear and cheerful voice:

"Who's cooking?"

Nobody answered. They were all staring at him.

"What?" He looked down at himself. "What's wrong? Have I got something on my face?"

"You," said Zoe. Her voice cracked. "You absolute idiot."

She threw herself at him.

It was a flying tackle, and he caught it with a grunt and a yell of mingled pain and delight, and the two of them toppled backward onto the furs. Jin strode forward and hauled them both up by the collar, scolding in a shaky torrent of Korean, and then abruptly stopped, and pulled Venn into a rough stiff embrace and held on, trembling. Over his shoulder, Venn's eyes found Archie's. They were bright and wet and perfectly alive.

"Hey, Architect," he said.

"Hey."

"I'm a little bit sore."

"I imagine."

"You know what the last thing I remember is?"

"What?"

"I looked cool." Venn grinned. "I looked so cool."

"You did," said Archie. "You really did."

…

Sera sat in the roots with her hands in her lap, and watched them with a look of such deep contentment that Archie almost didn't want to interrupt.

She was pale as paper. Her hair clung in dark damp strands to her forehead and the hollows of her cheeks. She had given away the last of her strength, and she knew it. But her eyes were clear. She had the look of a woman who has finished a long piece of work, and is allowed, at last, to rest.

"He will live," she said. "He may feel the lung for a while. The ribs will ache in the cold. But he is whole."

"Sera," said Archie. He knelt in front of her. "Thank you."

"It is what I am for."

"No. It isn't. You've been telling yourself that for fifteen years." He shook his head. "You're not for anything. You're a person. And you saved my friend." His voice shook. "I don't know how to say what that means."

"You have said it." She smiled. "You said it by building the door."

"It was only a frame."

"It was a gift." She took his hand in both of hers. They were warm, and dry, and perfectly steady. "Listen to me, Shieldbearer. I want to tell you something before you go. I want you to remember it."

"All right."

"When I walked out of the white, fifteen winters ago, I thought that I had come to die. I thought that was the whole of it. A woman with a year to live, and a Tree, and a final act." Her thumbs moved gently over his knuckles. "I was so sure. I was so tidy. I planned it as one plans a funeral."

"I know."

"And then a man came, with a shield that was too big for him, and a pencil in his pocket." Her eyes sparkled. "And he sat on a stone and told me about a table."

"I was rambling."

"You were right." Her voice caught. "I do not know what is on the other side. I do not know whether I will be allowed to follow. The rules of the Guardians are strange, and old, and I do not understand them. But if there is ever a way, if there is ever a seat..." She drew a breath. "I would like to take it."

"I'll find a way."

"I know you will."

"I promise."

"Do not promise." She laid a finger on his lips, gently, as one quiets a child. "Do not promise things that you cannot see. Promise me only that you will try."

"I'll try."

"Then it is enough."

…

They said their farewells in the long red light of evening.

The shore in the arch had held all day, but it was creaking now. The ironwood posts bowed inward. The lintel had developed a hairline crack. Dagny walked beside it, muttering and patting, like a woman nursing a sick animal. "It'll not last the hour," she told Archie. "Not past dusk. Go now, if you're going."

So they went.

They formed a line at the foot of the Tree, the four of them, with their packs on their backs and their weapons at their sides. The whole camp had turned out. They lined the roots on both sides, in rows, silent in the amber light: the soldiers, the dwarves, the farmers, the old women, the children on shoulders. The bandaged giant. The skald. The wounded and the whole. It seemed to Archie that every face he had seen in Yggdrasheim was there, looking at him.

Hrolf stepped out of the ranks.

He had put on his best mail for the occasion. It was clean, and old, and a little too tight about the belly. He held his helm under his arm. His beard had been trimmed. He stood very straight before Archie, and for a moment he did not speak, and then he put his fist to his chest, hard, with a clang.

"Shieldbearer," he said.

"Hrolf."

"I have fought under nine captains in my day. Good ones, and bad. Kings, and fools." His gruff voice trembled. "I would follow you into the Fire."

Archie did not know what to say.

"That is all. That is the whole of it." Hrolf bowed, stiffly, from the waist. "Go well."

"Go well," said Archie.

Dagny pressed a small leather pouch into his hand. It clinked. "Rivets," she said. "Dwarf-steel. In case you run into more doors." Ottar, the skald, came forward bright red and thrust a roll of birch-bark into Jin's arms. "The song," he stammered. "I wrote it down. So that you have it." And then a small girl with a hobbyhorse darted out of the crowd and flung her arms round Venn's knees, and he picked her up and swung her round and set her on the ground again, and the crowd laughed, a warm rumbling sound that rolled down the roots like a tide.

Brynja came last.

She came on foot. She had left the mare standing at the rope, and her helm was off, and her red hair lay loose over her shoulders. She stood before Zoe, and she did not say anything at all. She only took the silver spear from her back and laid it in the archer's hands.

"I cannot take this," said Zoe.

"It is a gift."

"It's the spear of a Valkyrie."

"It is my spear," said Brynja, "and I give it where I choose." Her eyes were bright. "You taught me a trick. I shall use it every day. When I am afraid, I shall pretend. And then I shall be doing it. And then I shall have done it." She smiled, tremulous and fierce. "I think I shall be very brave."

Zoe pulled her into an embrace.

They stood together in the roots, two women with their foreheads touching, one in torn gray and one in silver mail, and neither of them said a word. When they parted, they were both crying, and both laughing, and Brynja scrubbed at her face with the back of her gauntlet and said in a thick voice, "Go. Before I forget I am a warrior."

…

Archie turned back once more at the door.

Sera had risen. She stood in the roots, a small straight figure in a gray tunic, with her hair blowing round her face. She lifted her hand. It was not a wave. It was the gesture one makes to a friend across a river, open palm outward, held.

He lifted his.

I'll come back, he thought. He did not say it. I'll find the way.

Zoe's hand slid into his. In her other, the silver spear glinted. At her breast, under the torn collar of her coverall, something hummed. He had noticed it earlier, a faint, high, singing sound, like a finger drawn round the rim of a glass. She had put her hand to it twice. She'd looked puzzled. It was the pendant, he realized, the spiral pendant her mother had given her. It was warm against her skin.

"Is that normal?" he whispered.

"I don't know," she said. "It's never done that."

"Does it hurt?"

"No." She frowned. "It feels like it's listening."

The door was a narrow slot now, no wider than a man's shoulders. The shore creaked. Somewhere within the Tree a vast groan was rising, as of a ship's timbers parting. The light through the gap had gone from white to a faint cold blue.

"Now," said Jin.

They ran.

…

Archie went first. He turned sideways and slid into the gap, with his shield held in front of him, and the walls closed on his shoulders like a vise. The bark scraped his cheek. The air was thick and cold and smelled of silver. He pushed, and shoved, and felt the shield scream against the frame, and stumbled into the white.

Zoe came behind him, then Venn, who had to be fed through edgewise, swearing. Jin came last, with Ottar's song under his arm and a look of grim concentration. He hit the narrow slot at a run. The ironwood shore gave a crack like a gunshot. The lintel split from end to end. The two posts bent inward, groaning, and the gap shrank to a hand, to a finger, to a line.

"JIN!"

He threw himself.

It was not graceful. It was a flat horizontal dive, glasses first, with both arms outstretched, and Venn caught him by the wrists and heaved. For one long second he was half in and half out, with the pressure of the closing door crushing his legs. He screamed through his teeth. Then he was through, and the three of them went down in a heap on the white floor.

Behind them, the door slammed.

It did it with a sound they all remembered: a great wooden clap, like a hand coming down on a table, that rolled away into the silence and did not echo. The light went out. The air went still. For a long moment, nobody moved.

"Are we all here?" said Zoe, faintly.

"Count," said Archie.

"One."

"Two," said Venn.

"Three," said Jin, into the floor.

"Four." Archie let out a breath. "Okay. That's four."

"That's four," said Venn, and began to laugh. It was the weakest, wheeziest laugh in the world, and it set off Zoe, and then Jin, who lay on his back with his glasses askew and his hands on his chest, wheezing like a bellows. And Archie sat up in the white with his back against nothing and his shield in his lap and joined them, helplessly, till the tears ran down his face.

They had done it. They were all still there.

And somewhere, far behind them, under an enormous gray tree, a woman with a harp stood in the roots with her hand raised, and smiled.