No Warmth in It

This is told the way things are told below the roof: by someone who was there, to someone who was not, until the one who was not can tell it too. The one who was there is the smallest. The one who was not is Went-Round, who heard it first, which is why it is Went-Round's to tell you now.

The smallest was born after the two stones.

That matters, so it is said first. Everyone older than the smallest can remember a time when the up-people were news. The smallest cannot. For the smallest, the up-people are a told thing, like the first warm seep and the long dark before the fungus came: true, and old, and somebody else's. The smallest has never been up the squeeze and does not want to go. The two stones on the line are just where the line is.

So when the smallest wanted to be somewhere first, the smallest did not go up. The smallest went down, and in, to the place every telling begins.

The first warm seep is a real place. People forget that, because the story of it is so old. But it is there, at the bottom of the warm, where the amber is thickest: a place in the rock where the warmth comes up out of the ground on its own, and has done since before anybody's telling, and will do after. The people do not live right at it. It is too warm, and it is the beginning of things, and you do not sleep on a beginning. But anyone may go to it. The smallest went, before the telling, which is the wrong time to be awake.

The smallest moved a stone first. Say that too. The smallest had been told the manners by Stone-First-Who-Waited, the same as everyone, and did them properly, at the top of the last passage, so the ground would say someone is coming to whoever was at the seep.

Nobody was at the seep. Nobody ever is.

There was a shape there.

Here is what the smallest told, in order, and Went-Round has not improved it.

The shape stood where the seep is told to be, in the amber, a little way out from the wall. It was about the size of a person. It was dark at the edges, the way a person is dark at the edges when the amber is behind them, and the amber was behind it. It did not move while the smallest looked.

The smallest did the thing every person below the roof does without trying, which is to know the shape of the warmth in a place. You cannot help it. A warm place has a shape, and a person in it is a piece of the shape, and you feel where the pieces are the way you feel where your own feet are.

The shape was not a piece of it.

Where the shape stood there was a gap in the warm, the size of the shape. Not cold. Nothing. As if the warmth went round it, the way Went-Round goes round a thing.

The smallest stood very still, because that is manners too, and waited to be told who it was. The ground had said nothing. The smallest's own stone had said someone is coming, and whoever was at the seep should have answered, with a stone of their own, the way the manners go. Nothing answered. The smallest waited for as long as the story of the up-people takes to tell, which is a short story now, and counted it through, and the shape did not answer a stone and did not move a stone and did not ask.

When the story ended the smallest looked again, and the shape was not there.

No stone had moved. That was the part the smallest said twice. Nobody had come and nobody had gone, by the ground. The warm had its shape back, with no gap in it, as if there had never been one.

The smallest did not run. The smallest moved a stone, properly, on the way out, so the ground would say someone is leaving, and walked back up the last passage into the warm, and came to Went-Round, because Went-Round was awake and was nearest, and told it.

Went-Round went to the seep.

It is what Went-Round does. Went-Round is called that for going round a thing rather than through it, a blocked passage, a hard thought, and a thing you have only been told is a thing you go round until you have seen it from another side. Went-Round moved a stone at the top of the last passage, and the ground said someone is coming, and nobody answered, because nobody was there.

The seep was the seep. The warmth came up out of the ground where it always has. The amber was thick and still. There was no gap in anything.

Went-Round stood where the smallest said the shape had stood, and felt the warm have its ordinary shape, with Went-Round as a piece of it, and felt nothing else. Went-Round looked at the ground. Nothing had been moved. Went-Round knows what moved ground looks like, which is why Went-Round looked, and it looked like ground that nobody had stood on since before the telling.

So the smallest had seen a thing, and the thing had left no stone and no mark and no warmth, and the only one who had been there was the smallest.

Went-Round thought about that on the way back up, going round it.

The people have two rules for something at the seep. A stranger is announced by the ground, and you leave the place to them until they ask. A person asks. Those are the rules. They have never needed a third one, because nothing has ever been in a place that was not a stranger and not a person.

The thing had not been announced. So it was not a stranger. The thing had not asked. So it was not a person. Went-Round went round that from every side there was, and it had no other side.

But the people did have a word. They had had it since the up-people's light first came down the long passage and swung, and something went across the ground ahead of it, dark, and moving, and moving no stone, and the old ones went back from it before they went back from the light. The small ones learned the word that season. A shadow. A thing that moves, and moves no stone.

Went-Round had not thought, until now, that a shadow could stand still.

Stone-First-Who-Waited listened the way the old ones listen, which is with the whole body still, so that nothing you do while you are listening becomes part of the telling by mistake.

The smallest told it, standing up, in the amber, with Went-Round beside them, and the whole warm heard it. The stone moved first, properly. The shape at the seep. The gap in the warm. The stone not answered. The short story counted through. The looking again. No stone moved by its going. Went-Round's going to the seep after, and finding the seep, and nothing else.

When it was done, nobody made the small sound. That was how Stone-First knew the warm was afraid, a little, and that the fear was the small kind that comes from a story with no end on it, and not the big kind, which the people do not have, because nothing below the roof has ever given them a reason.

"Who was there?" said Stone-First.

"I was," said the smallest.

"Anyone else?"

"No."

"Then it is yours," said Stone-First. "Nobody can tell it but you, and nobody can say it did not happen, because nobody was there to say so. That is the first thing. Hold on to it."

The smallest held on to it. You could see them do it.

"Now the other thing," said Stone-First. "What was it?"

"I do not know."

"No," said Stone-First. "Nor do I. Nor does Went-Round, who went and looked, which was right. It was not announced, so it was not a stranger. It did not ask, so it was not a person. It had no warmth. It moved no stone." Stone-First let that sit in the warm, where everyone could feel the shape of it. "We have never had a thing like that. So we have no rule for it, and I am not going to make one tonight, because a rule you make from one telling is a rule you will have to go round later."

"It was a shadow," said Went-Round, from the far side of the amber. "That is our word. A thing that moves, and moves no stone. It covers this."

Stone-First looked at Went-Round for as long as it takes to say a name, and did not argue, and did not agree, and the warm noticed that.

"Tell it again," Stone-First said to the smallest. "Leave out what it was not. Tell only what it did."

So the smallest told it again, and it was shorter: a shape stood at the seep, in the amber, and did not answer a stone, and was not there when a short story ended. That was all. That was the whole of it. Stone-First nodded, the way the old ones nod when something is getting true.

"That one is yours," said Stone-First. "The other one, what it was, is nobody's. It may stay nobody's. Some tellings have no end, and you do not make one up to be comfortable."

Stone-First-Who-Waited went up to the line afterwards, because that is where the margin is, and keeping it means being there.

The two stones were where they had been left, one on each side of the place where the feet had stopped. Nothing had come down the squeeze. Nothing had gone up it. The up-people's loud came and went above, the way it did, with the knock at the start of each working time, a stone set down and a step back, and Stone-First answered it as always, and it was all as it had been. The up-people had not been told. They could not be, and it was not theirs.

Stone-First stood on the line and felt the shape of the warm below, the whole of it, the way you can from the edge: the warm of the people asleep, the small ones in the middle, the old ones round them, the amber thick at the bottom where the seep was.

It had its shape. It had no gap in it.

Stone-First thought about the smallest, who had been born after the two stones, and for whom even the up-people were a told thing, and who had gone to the beginning of every story to find something that was theirs, and had found one. It was a good telling. It was short, and true, and it had an end on it, the end being that the shape was not there.

What it did not have was a middle. Nobody had been there for the middle. Nobody could be. A thing that moves no stone cannot be announced, and a thing that does not ask cannot be answered, and the people's whole way of knowing things, which is to be there, and to tell it, and to be heard, had gone round it and found no other side.

Stone-First had kept the margin for a whole life so as to be there on the time when something happened. Something had happened, at the bottom of the warm, as far from the margin as a thing can be, and the one who was there was the smallest, and the margin had not been part of it.

That was still the same shape. It was just a different place.

Stone-First stayed on the line, in the light that never changes, with the two stones, and did not go down, and did not make a rule, and waited, which is a thing Stone-First is now named for, to be told what came next.