Keeps-A-Hand-On-It

The name is a telling, on the pattern by which the Told name everyone: the first true thing said of a person that others went on repeating. What was said of this one, by the small ones first, for a whole season, and by the old ones only at the end of it, is that they keep a hand on it. In the small ones' game of the manners the knocker puts a hand to a stone and moves it once; this one puts a hand to the stone and does not move it, and lets the whole warm wait, old ones and all, for as long as it takes to say a name and longer, and then moves it, well. The name is rendered in translation, as every name of the people is; the people's word is theirs.

They were the youngest of the people for the whole of the record's third season below the roof and most of its fourth, and the chapters call them the smallest until the name goes round. They were born after the two stones. Everyone older can remember a time when the up-people were news; for this one the up-people are a told thing, like the first warm seep and the long dark, true and old and somebody else's. They have never been up the squeeze and have never wanted to go.

What the Record Holds

Nothing, from the survey's side. The Fliade survey has no way to tell one Pandoid below the margin from another, and has never seen this one.

From inside, No Warmth in It (S12E01C01): the small one who wanted to be somewhere first and went down instead of up, to the place every telling begins, with a stone moved first, and found a shape standing at the seep with no warmth in it, which answered no stone and was not there when a short telling ended; who told it to Went-Round, and then to the warm, and was told by Stone-First-Who-Waited that the telling was theirs and that what the shape was might stay nobody's. In Someone Is Coming (S12E01C02) the small one who asked whether nobody's stone was the thing from the seep, and said the small ones would only look, and was learning to go round a thing. And in Out of the Wall (S12E01C04) the reading the warm kept as theirs: the bright shape was the same as the shape at the seep, with light in it.

In the fourth year, Nobody Came (S14E01C01): the one who said what the game was called, and asked Carried-It-Sleeping who Stone-First's stone at the top of the shelving was for, and knocked by keeping a hand on the stone until an old one made the small sound by mistake, and found out that the waiting was the best part and could be made longer. In Not a Place You Tell From (S14E01C02) the one who knocked in front of Stone-First for the first time, and made Stone-First-Who-Waited, who has waited longer than anyone below the roof for anything, wait for a small one to move a stone. And in Keeps a Hand on It (S14E01C03), the chapter that names them: an old one, waiting with the rest of the warm for the hand to move, says what the warm has been doing all season without being told, and that a stone that is going to speak is waited for as long as the hand is on it, which is the people's answer to how the up-people might be kept on the line for a telling longer than a hand; the saying goes round the warm, and the small ones' words go round with it in old ones' voices, and are a name. In Been Told (S14E01C04) Keeps-A-Hand-On-It has a hand on a stone in the game when the up-people's stone sounds from the line and Stone-First's answer does not follow it, and keeps the hand there while the whole warm waits for the line, on the reading that two stones at once are noise and you do not move yours while everyone is waiting for another; measures the waiting by telling the first warm seep through in the head and most of the long dark; and hears the warm say, when the ground finally speaks, a thing about the up-people the way the people say a thing about someone: they stayed.

What the Record Does Not Carry

Their name. A translation of a telling; the people's word is not held, and whether it is one word or several the record has not been told.

Their age, and their sex. The record's they is its translation default. The smallest was the warm's word for them while it was true; the record does not say how long it stayed true.

What they saw at the seep. The telling is theirs and is kept as told: a shape, no warmth, no stone answered, gone when a short telling ended. What it was is nobody's, on Stone-First's rule, and the record does not fill it.

How long the up-people would wait. The chapter that names them ends with Stone-First's hand on the answering rock and the stone moved at once, as always, and nobody below the roof knew how long an up-person would wait for a stone that had not spoken. Been Told answers the first half: one of them waited for the whole of a telling. How long they would wait for nothing, nobody has tried, and the record does not say.

See also: Stone-First, Teddy, Went-Round, Fliade, Below the Roof.