Stone-First-Who-Waited (Pandoid, keeper of the margin)

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."