Someone Is Coming

This is told the way things are told below the roof, by the one who was there, and this time the one who was there is the only one who has ever been there, on the line, on all the times when nothing happens.

Stone-First-Who-Waited was on the line, and it was the middle of a working time, which is the most ordinary time there is.

Here is what ordinary is now, since the two stones. The up-people's loud comes down the long passage, all at once and then steadily, and settles at the junction. Then one of them comes to the squeeze, not through it, and sets a stone down on their side, and steps back. That is their knock. Stone-First answers it the way the Told answer a stone, by moving one, a good one, at the edge of the silt, and the ground tells them, and the up-person goes back up to the working. Then nothing, for the whole of the working time, and then the loud goes away up the long passage toward the cold. It has been like that for more tellings than the small ones can count, and the small ones can count now.

So the knock had come and been answered, and the up-people were at their working a long way up, and Stone-First was standing on the line with the two stones, one each side of the place where the feet had stopped, and the silt holding its three shapes of feet, and the light that never changes not changing.

And a stone moved.

Not above. Stone-First knew the sound of the squeeze and this was not it. Below, and near. At the edge of the silt, on the people's side of the line, toward the top of the shelving, where the rock stands up out of the ground in the way that makes a good stone to move if you are coming up to the line and want the ground to say so.

It was moved well. That was the first thing Stone-First noticed, and the thing Stone-First would say twice afterwards, in the warm. Not a slip. Not a small one's loud scrape. A single sound, plain and complete, the way a stone sounds when somebody who knows the manners puts their hand to it and moves it once.

The ground said what the ground says. Someone is coming.

Stone-First stood still, with the whole body, and waited to be told who.

Nobody came.

Stone-First waited for as long as a short telling takes, the story of the up-people's coming, and counted it through, the way you count a thing you are waiting by. Nobody came up the shelving. Nobody came down the squeeze; the loud was still a long way up, at its working. Nothing came onto the silt. The light did not change, because it never does.

Then Stone-First did a thing Stone-First had not done in a whole life of keeping the margin, which was to leave the line to go and look at a stone.

It was where it should not be. A rock at the edge of the silt, about the size of two hands, lying a little way from the place it had always lain, and the place it had always lain was there beside it, a mark in the ground the shape of the stone, the way there always is. Stone-First has moved more stones than anyone below the roof and knows what a moved stone looks like. It looked like that. It looked like somebody had come up the shelving to the top, and put a hand to it, and moved it once, well, so that the ground would say someone is coming to whoever was on the line.

There were no feet. The silt held the three shapes it had held since the small one stood there, and nothing else. The shelving is rock and does not hold feet, but the ground that announces you is the same ground that you stand on, and nobody was standing on it. Stone-First felt for that, the way you feel for the shape of warmth in a place without trying, and the line was as it always is: the edge of the warm, where the shape runs out, and nobody in it but Stone-First.

The ground does not lie. Stone-First had told that to every small one who ever asked why you move a stone first, and it was true, and it was still true. The ground had not lied. It had said someone, and there was no one.

Stone-First went back onto the line and stood there for the rest of the working time and did not move the stone back.

Here is why. A stone that has been moved for you is not yours to move again. It is the beginning of a telling, and you do not tidy a beginning away. Stone-First had said that about the up-people's stone and had meant it, and had left it on the line for a whole year, and a rule you keep only when you know who moved the stone is not a rule.

So there were three stones on the line now. The up-people's. Stone-First's answer to it. And one that was nobody's.

Stone-First told it standing up, in the warm, to everyone, and said it was moved well twice, and said nothing else twice.

Carried-It-Sleeping listened lying down. Carried-It-Sleeping was not among the small ones any more, by the warm's count of tellings, and had not been for some time, and still listened lying down from habit, in the middle, with the small ones, who were Carried-It-Sleeping's to keep. There were more of them now. The smallest was one of them, the one with the telling from the seep, who had been quiet since.

The warm did not make the small sound. It had not made it after the seep either. Carried-It-Sleeping was learning what the warm sounds like when it does not know what to say, which is a thing you can only learn twice.

"Was it the one from the seep?" said the smallest.

Stone-First did not answer. Nobody answered for Stone-First. That was manners, and it was also, Carried-It-Sleeping thought, because nobody could.

"The ground said someone," said one of the other small ones. "The ground was there."

"The ground is always there," said Went-Round, from the far side of the amber, and went round it, the way Went-Round does, so that everyone could see it from the other side. "The ground says someone. It has never once said who. Think about it. You move a stone, and the ground tells me someone is coming, and then I know who because you come. Or because I go and look, and there you are. We have always been the ones who said who. The ground never did. We just never noticed, because somebody was always there."

The warm thought about that. You could feel it think, the way you feel the shape of a place.

Carried-It-Sleeping thought about a different stone.

The humming stone. Carried sleeping, down the squeeze, and set at the edge of the up-people's place, so that their own ground would tell them someone was there. And it had. And then, for a whole season, the up-people had stood on their side of it and not known who. They had asked the dark every working time and nobody had answered, and Stone-First had stood on the line and not answered, and Went-Round had said that was everybody keeping manners at everybody else, and everyone had made the small sound.

Carried-It-Sleeping had done that to them. Had not known, doing it, what it was like.

This was what it was like.

The small ones wanted to go up and look at the stone.

Of course they did. A thing had happened at the line, where the small ones were not supposed to go and went anyway, and the thing was a stone that nobody had moved, and the only person who had seen it was the oldest of the people, who had told it in the fewest words there were. The two who had been trying the squeeze since before Carried-It-Sleeping was named were older now, and fitted it less, and had taught the next ones everything. The smallest was among the next ones.

"We would only look," said the smallest. "We would move a stone first."

"Who would you be moving it for?"

The smallest did not know, and said so.

"Then you cannot move one," said Carried-It-Sleeping, "because that is not what a stone is for. A stone is so the one who is there is not surprised by you. Nobody is there. Stone-First is there, and Stone-First has told it, and it is Stone-First's. The stone on the line is not."

"Whose is it?"

"Nobody's. Nobody was there."

"Then it is nobody's to stop us," said the smallest, who was learning to go round a thing, which is what happens to the small ones who listen to Went-Round.

Carried-It-Sleeping had not expected to have to work that out, lying in the warm, with the whole of the small ones listening to see which way it would go. But that is what keeping is: the thing you have to work out while they watch you.

"If a thing is somebody's," said Carried-It-Sleeping, "and you want it, you ask. That is the whole of the manners. If a thing is nobody's, and you want it, there is nobody to ask. So you cannot have it. It is not that nobody can stop you. It is that nobody can say yes. Those are different. Stone-First told me that once, about a different stone, when I was your size, and I did not understand it, and now I do."

Nobody had told Carried-It-Sleeping that either. It had just turned out to be true, the way the things Stone-First says turn out to be true later, when you are lying in the warm being watched.

The small ones did not go up. Carried-It-Sleeping felt the warm keep its shape, all the pieces in it, and did not sleep, and listened to the smallest not sleeping either, and thought that there were now two tellings below the roof with no middle in them, and that the smallest had one and Stone-First had the other, and that neither of them was going to be made comfortable.

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

Three stones. The up-people's, a year old, with the silt worn smooth round it. Stone-First's answer, beside it. And the third, at the edge of the silt, at the top of the shelving, lying beside the mark of where it had been, moved well, nobody's.

Stone-First stood on the line and thought about what a stone is for, because it was the first time in a whole life that the question had needed thinking about.

A stone is so that nobody is surprised by anybody. That is the whole of it. You move one, and the ground tells whoever is there, and then when you come they are not surprised, and when they answer you are not surprised, and nobody has had to be anywhere they were not asked into. It is short, because it has never needed to be long. It has worked for every stone that was ever moved below the roof, since before the tellings begin.

It had worked for this one. The ground had done its part. Stone-First had not been surprised by anybody.

That was the thing Stone-First kept going round, standing there, and could not get to the other side of. The manners had been done, properly, by nobody, and they had worked, and Stone-First had stood on the line and waited to be told who, the way you do, and the telling had not gone on. A stone is the beginning of a telling. This one had begun. Stone-First did not know whose it was, and nobody did, and it might not go on, and Stone-First was going to be on the line if it did, because that is what the line is for.

Above, the loud came down the long passage, all at once and then steadily, and settled, and then one of the up-people came to the squeeze and set a stone down on their side, and stepped back.

Stone-First answered it. A good one, at the edge of the silt, moved once.

And thought, moving it, that the up-people had stood on their side of a stone for a whole season, not knowing who had moved it, and had not made a rule, as far as anyone below the roof could tell. They had kept coming down. They had kept asking the dark. And in the end the smallest of them had come through the squeeze with a stone of their own and set it on the line and waited, and that had been the right thing, and it had been late, and it had been theirs.

Stone-First did not know what the other side of nobody's stone was, or whether it had one.

Stone-First stood on the line, with three stones, and waited.