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

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.