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

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.