Home

It had come for the screaming.

She understood that a moment too late. The great dark shape bent in the chamber, patient and soft and without a face, and every part of it leaned the same way, as a field of wheat leans in a wind. It leaned toward the stair. It leaned toward the small thin sound that had not stopped for ten seconds, the high ragged wail of a boy of ten who had spent the better part of a month being brave and had run clean out.

"Someone is crying," said the Hunger, in its child's voice. "Oh. I'd like to go and see."

"No," said Isolde.

"I won't hurt him."

"I know you won't mean to."

"I only want to—" The great height tilted. A thread of black unwound from it, slow and delicate as a spider's silk, and crept across the flags toward the pillar where Brannoc stood with the sobbing boy clutched against his chest. The old man's face was gray. His one eye was fixed on the dark. He had flung up his free hand; sand ran out of it in a gold thread; and nothing at all happened, because there was nothing in the world to burn.

That's how it begins, she thought. That's how it always began.

It puts out a thread to go and look.

She stepped into its way.

It was the smallest movement. She simply walked six paces across the black flagstones and stood between the thread and the boy. She had her arms at her sides and her chin up. The thread stopped an inch from her skirt. It trembled, uncertain, like a hand held out to a stranger's dog.

"It's me you want," said Isolde.

"I don't want anyone."

"You want somebody who's crying. Well. I'm crying." It was perfectly true; she had been crying, steadily and rather quietly, for the last ten minutes, and had only just noticed. "Take me instead. Look at me, not at him. He's ten. He's had a terrible month. He doesn't need to be looked at by a thing like you."

"A thing like me," said the Hunger, and the voice cracked. "Yes. I know."

"I didn't mean it unkindly."

"It's what I am."

"It's not all you are." She drew a breath. "Look. I'm going to do something stupid. I'd like you to tell me if it hurts."

"What?"

"I'm going to tell you about my sister."

…

She had never in her life spoken it aloud to a stranger.

She had told Valerian, in the dark of the Aviary, with the porcelain birds for an audience. She had never told anyone else. She had gone about every day since then with a Tuesday sitting in her throat like a swallowed stone, and never once opened her mouth.

She opened it now.

"Her name is Linnet," said Isolde. "She's sixteen. She has a chipped tooth, because she fell off a wall when she was nine, and she'd rather die than let me say so. She likes the nasty books. She likes the ones where the wolf wins." Her voice caught. "I read to her for twelve years. Every night. And on a Tuesday in the autumn I stayed late at the Institute to look at a manuscript, and I came home at midnight and she was lying on the floor."

The thread of black did not move.

"I've been angry about it for twelve days," she said. "I've been angry since the night it happened. I've been angry at the Order, and the Bloom, and the manuscript, and the monk who copied it. I've been angry at God. Mostly I've been angry at me." She wiped her face with the heel of her hand. "And I've never said it. Not to her. She doesn't know. She thinks I was working late. She thinks it was just a cough."

"It was a cough."

"It was a cough," said Isolde, "and I wasn't there."

She had stopped trying to hold her voice steady. It broke on the last word and went to pieces, and she stood in the middle of the cold chamber and sobbed, undisguised, with her hands hanging empty.

The Hunger listened.

It did not take. That was what she noticed first. She had steeled herself for a draw, a pull, a vampiric tug at the heart. She felt nothing of the kind. It only listened, with the same appalling patience as the door; and as she spoke, the thread of black that had touched the hem of her skirt drew back, very slightly, and curled in on itself, and began to hum. It was a low, thoughtful, wondering sound. It was the sound of a creature that has tasted something unexpected.

"It doesn't go in," said the Hunger.

"What?"

"What you said. It doesn't— I thought it would go in. It usually does." The great shape swayed. "People tell me things, in the dark, when they're afraid. Awful things. And they go into me, and I grow. I can't help it. It's like water going into sand." Its voice dropped. "But you said it to me. Not at me. And it's still yours."

"It's supposed to be."

"Is it?"

"It's mine," said Isolde. "I'm only letting you see it."

…

It wasn't a plan. She wanted to be very clear about that, afterward, to anyone who asked. She had no theory and no design and no hidden Old Tongue stanza ready in her pocket. She had one fact, which was that she had told the thing the truth and it had not eaten her, and she did the next thing that suggested itself, which was to do it again.

"Odile," she said.

"Who?"

"She was seventeen. She was a scullion from Pilchard Row. She had a pot lid." She bent and picked up the dented tin, and held it against her chest. "She went into a city of bells and drew off a monster so that we could live. She said Tell Nan I was good."

The Hunger's thread curled.

"Tell me," it said.

So she told it. She told it the whole of the harvest village, and the doll with the brass ear, and the girl who had stood up in the dark and said I've got a lid and I'm not afraid to use it. She told it the stream. She told it the clang. She stood in the middle of the chamber with her chin quivering, and the black thread listened, and the great soft height above it bowed a little lower, with a sound like a very old tree.

"Tam," said a rough voice.

She looked round.

Brannoc had set the boy down. He stood with his one eye fixed on the dark, his big scarred hands open, his jaw working. His voice came out hoarse and flat. "My brother. Tamsin Rook. Eighteen years old. He'd a way of whistling through his teeth. I had him on the barge the night it burned, and I was meant to be minding him, and I wasn't, I was— I was drunk." He swallowed. "I've never told that. I've said it was the river."

"Tamsin," said the Hunger. "Tam."

"Aye."

"Thank you."

"Dora," said Wick.

They turned. He was crouched at the foot of the pillar, in his huge borrowed coat, with his fists screwed into his eyes. He took them down. His face was swollen and white and fierce. "Dora Mallow. She cheated at dice. She'd a bad leg. She taught me how to roll a copper along my knuckles." He sniffed. "They sent her in the Doors and she never came back. She was kind to me. And the lady who sang."

"The lady who sang," said the Hunger.

"She wasn't real," said Wick. "But she was the only one."

And then, from the end of the ring of names, in a low, shaking, perfectly steady voice, Valerian said:

"Edmund Tarrow."

She turned.

He had come up beside her. He stood bareheaded, with the candle behind him throwing his shadow long across the floor. There was something quite different about the set of his shoulders. They were not the Overseer's, stiff and square. They were not the boy's, loose and laughing. They were something in between, and straighter than either. And his face, in the thin light, was wet.

"Mirabel Vance," he said. "Corwin Lisle. Hester Quill. Aldous Pym." He paused at each. "Saffron Reeve. Tobias Marsh. Lucan Ferrow."

He looked at the ring.

"I did not remember them," said Valerian. "I do not remember them now. But I held each of their hands, at the end, and told them not to pick up the knife. I told them in the same words. I was not believed. I think they were kind to me." His voice cracked. "I think I would like them to be said."

"They have been," said the Hunger, very softly. "Every one."

It had grown quiet.

The black thread no longer reached. It had drawn up, and fallen back, and the great shape that had filled the roof was visibly less than it had been. It no longer scraped the ceiling. It no longer pressed against the walls. It hung in the center of the chamber, a high soft column of dark, quivering a little, like a candle-flame in a draught; and from somewhere deep inside it came a sound she had not expected.

It was weeping.

…

"I didn't know," said the Hunger.

"I know."

"I didn't know you could say them." It was shaking now. "I thought, if I took it, they'd stop. I thought that was what I was for. Someone is crying, and I take it, and then they're not. I thought it was a kindness."

"It was."

"It was a kindness, and they died of it."

"Yes." Isolde had come forward. She did not know when. She stood at the very edge of the dark, close enough to feel it, a cold that was not quite cold, like the air of an unlit church. "That's the trouble with taking it. You can't give it back. You can only keep it. And you didn't want to. You just didn't know there was another way."

"What other way?"

"Leaving it where it is. Letting them keep it. Sitting with them while they carry it." She took a long breath. "And when it's too heavy, saying: I'm here."

"That's all?"

"That's all."

"It doesn't sound like enough."

"It never does," said Isolde. "It's the only thing that works."

She looked at the black column. She felt the sentence rise in her mind, whole, all thirteen words, the first of them written in a Harvest Queen's doll-mouth and the last of them hers. She had known it since the bells; no, since the Aviary; no, since the first night in the Crossing, at Mrs. Dray's table, with a cup of tea that tasted of her mother's kitchen. She had known it for as long as she had known how to read.

What is locked away cannot heal until someone stays to call it—

"Do you want a name?" said Isolde.

The Hunger was silent.

"You said you'd had one. You said it's gone. I think it's not gone. I think you've just forgotten it, the way he forgot." She nodded to Valerian. "But I don't think the name is the point. I think it's the calling. I think what a thing needs, when it's been locked away, isn't a better cage or a worse one. It's someone to come to the door and say its name and mean it."

"Nobody's ever—"

"I know. I'm going to." She was shaking. "But I don't know what to call you. I don't know what you are. You're a grief, and a hunger, and a hole in the ground, and a very old child. And I think the only word that fits all of them is a plain one."

She put out her hand.

She put it out, palm up, as one holds out a hand to a creature that has been beaten, and she said it. The last word. She said it low, and clear, and without the least flourish, in the dead cold of the thirteenth room.

"Home."

…

Nothing happened.

For three heartbeats, for four, she stood with her hand held out and the word hanging in front of her like breath in the frost. She heard the candle sputter. She heard her own pulse. She felt a long slow terror begin at her knees and climb. I was wrong. It isn't that. It's something else, it's dead or evil or beast or—

Then the Hunger spoke.

"Say it again," it whispered.

"Home."

"Again."

"Home. Home, home, home." She was laughing and crying. "This is your home. I'm here. I'm not going anywhere. You're not a prisoner and you're not a monster and nobody has to be sorry. It's your home. And I'll stay, and I'll call you, and when you can't find the way back—"

"I'll hear you."

"You'll hear me."

"Will you tell me your name?"

She stopped.

Never answer your true name. It was the rule of the Wolf Wood. It was the oldest rule in the Threshold. She had been taught it by a hundred yellow eyes in the dark, and she had kept it, and Valerian had kept it, and the wolves had known them both by name anyway, because someone had given it away.

The Hunger knew mine. It had to. It was the Hunger that told the wolf.

It's been listening to me since the day my mother whispered it.

She understood, then. It had always known. She had given it, without meaning to, nine days before her mother died; she had been given it with a breath and a kiss; and from that hour the thing under Aethelgard, which listened for the crying of the world, had known there was a child in a narrow bed in Tallow Lane who would one day be the best reader in the kingdom.

"I'm sorry," said the Hunger. "I didn't mean to. It was so loud."

"I know."

"Will you tell me?"

"You already know it."

"Not like that. I mean— Will you give it to me?"

She took a breath.

"Isolde Marguerite Hale," she said, aloud, in the Old Tongue and the common, in the dark. "That's my name. It's yours to call me by. It's yours to keep. If you ever lose the way, you say it, and I will come."

And something in the chamber, some enormous slow weight, let go.

…

The Hunger shrank.

It did not vanish. It poured, the way smoke pours down a flue, folding in on itself in a soft descending spiral, until the great soft column had become a cloud, and the cloud a drift, and the drift a heap the size of a sleeping cat. It settled on the flagstones at her feet. It was warm. She could feel the warmth of it on her ankles. It was not at all what she had expected. It was dark, certainly; but it was the dark of a hearth at night, of a closed room, of a blanket drawn up to the chin.

It spoke to her in the same small voice. But the voice had changed. It was no longer old.

"Thank you," it said. "I've a favor to ask."

"Anything."

"I have no words. I have only ever had yours. I've been taking them from the readers, a few at a time, when they weren't looking. It's how I learned to talk." It sounded embarrassed. "But they never quite stayed. I'd like to keep some. I'd like to be able to say it myself."

"Say what?"

"Home."

She understood.

"The Old Tongue," said Isolde, slowly.

"I'd not want all of it. Only the part you use." The little dark shifted. "It'd cost you. I can feel that. You have it very bright, and very near. I'd not take it if you minded."

Behind her, she heard Valerian's breath catch.

She did not turn. She stood looking down at the warm black heap, with her notebook against her heart. She thought: Twelve years. Four years of the Institute. A hundred nights over a Fourth-Century grammar, by lamplight, with ink on my wrist. Everything I am.

She thought of a girl in bed forty-one, with a petal in her arm, who liked the wolf to win.

It's a language, she thought. It's only a language. I can learn another.

She was lying. She knew she was lying. It was the first lie she had told in the Threshold. And the black thread round her wrist, which had been quiet for twelve days, did not so much as flicker, because it was a lie that she had told for love, and the covenant had never been written to punish those.

"Take it," said Isolde. "Take it. Be able to say it."

The Hunger drew in a long breath.

She felt it go.

It went like a tide. There was no pain. There was only a slow cold withdrawal, from the roots of her tongue to the back of her skull, a clear, graceful unthreading of a thousand years of grammar. The Tenses went, and the Moods, and the great knotted vowel-shifts of the Third Century. The Fourth-Century gloss went. The monk in his cellar went. She looked down at her notebook, which she held open, and saw her own small square hand run across the page in lines of strange black marks, tidy and meaningless, like the tracks of a bird.

They were words, she thought. They were words a moment ago.

"Thank you," said the Hunger, and now it said it, in a low clear voice, in the Old Tongue, which she could no longer understand. She knew only that it was kind. She knew it as one knows the meaning of a lullaby in a country one has never seen.

It climbed into her pot lid.

It did it all of its own accord, the warm dark heap, nosing over the rim of the dented tin as a kitten climbs into a basket. It curled in the bowl of the lid, and subsided, and she felt the weight of it, small and trusting, against her breast. A faint thread of gold ran along the metal where it touched.

"Home," it said, drowsily, in the tongue of the dead, and went to sleep.