Out of the Wall

This is told the way things are told below the roof, by someone who was there. This time everyone was. That turns out to be a problem, and the problem is the last part of the telling, so it is kept for the end.

The warm was full. It was the time after the working, when the up-people's loud has gone up the long passage toward the cold and the whole of the people are in the amber, and someone is telling, and the small ones are in the middle being kept. Carried-It-Sleeping was keeping them, lying down, and Went-Round was telling the two stones, which the small ones ask for most, because it has an up-person in it.

Here is what Carried-It-Sleeping noticed first, and it was not the shape. It was the wall.

The light below the roof does not change. It is amber on one wall and blue-green on the other, and it has been like that since before anybody's telling begins, and nobody looks at it, the way nobody looks at their own feet. Carried-It-Sleeping looked at it, because it had gone thin. The amber on the near wall, the one the small ones sleep against, had gone dim the way a telling goes quiet near its end, and the dimness had a shape, and the shape was the near wall with something taken out of it.

And in the middle of the warm, above the small ones, the something stood.

It was the size of a person. It was made of light. Not lit, the way a person is lit when the amber is behind them; made of it, amber and blue-green both, gathered up into a shape and standing there, brighter than any wall below the roof has ever been. It had the amber's colour on one side and the blue-green's on the other, the way the warm does, and it did not move.

Nobody had moved a stone. Nobody had needed to. Nobody was coming. It was already there, and the ground had said nothing about it at all.

Carried-It-Sleeping felt for the warmth, without trying, the way you do. The warm was thick there, in the middle, with all the small ones in it. And in the thick of it, the size of the shape, there was a gap. Not cold. Nothing. The smallest had said that, about the seep. Carried-It-Sleeping had not understood it until now.

The small ones nearest it did not move away. Nobody told them to. Carried-It-Sleeping noticed that too, and put it aside, because there was a great deal to notice and only the one time to do it in.

Stone-First-Who-Waited was on the line when the warm changed shape.

Not a piece going. Stone-First knows that shape; a small one takes a piece with them and the piece comes back. This was the warm going thin in the middle, where it is thickest, as if something had been taken out of it from the inside, and the shape of the thinness was the size of a person, and Stone-First had felt that once before, at the bottom of the warm, in a telling by the smallest.

Stone-First came down the shelving faster than the old ones go.

At the bottom, a stone. A good one. The ground said someone is coming to the whole of the people, and the whole of the people heard it, the way they always do, and not one of them turned.

That was the first thing Stone-First saw, coming into the amber: a people with their backs to a stone. Then the thing they had their backs turned for.

It stood in the middle of the warm. In nobody's place. That was the second thing, and Stone-First looked for it on purpose, because the last one had stood in Stone-First's. This one stood where nobody sleeps and nobody tells from, in the open floor between the small ones' places, and the people had gone back from it without being told, so that there was a ring of open ground round it, the way you leave a place to a stranger until they ask.

It was not a stranger. The ground had not said so. It had not asked.

And nobody was afraid of it.

Stone-First stood at the edge of the amber with the whole body still, so that nothing done while a thing is happening becomes part of the telling by mistake, and watched the people not be afraid, and was more careful than Stone-First had been about the shape at the seep, or nobody's stone, or the thing in Stone-First's own place, because those had been dark, and the people had been wary of dark things that move since the up-people's light first came down the long passage, and this was light, and the people had never once below the roof had a reason to be wary of light.

The small ones nearest it were looking up at it the way they look at a good telling.

Stone-First did not go nearer. Did not move a stone, because there was nobody to move it for. Did not make a rule. Stood, and was there, which is the whole of what Stone-First does, and waited to see what it would do.

It did nothing.

Went-Round went round it.

That is what Went-Round does, and there had never been a thing below the roof that needed it more. A thing you have only seen from one side is a thing you have only been told, even if your own eyes did the telling. So Went-Round got up from the far side of the amber, where Went-Round had stopped in the middle of the two stones with the small ones waiting for the rest, and walked, slowly, round the ring the people had left, and looked at it from everywhere there was.

It was the same from the back. That was the thing Went-Round would say afterwards, and nobody had thought to ask it, and it mattered. A person has a front and a back. The amber is behind them from one side and in front of them from the other. This had no behind. It was light all the way round, the amber's colour and the blue-green's, gathered up, and from the far side of it the near wall was dim exactly the way it was from the near side, so that wherever you stood, the light had come out of the wall and gone to the shape, and the shape was where the light was now.

Went-Round was close. Closer than anyone. Close enough to feel the gap in the warm with the whole body, not just the part that notices things, and it was a gap, and it was nothing, and it was the size of a person, and it was not cold.

Went-Round did not touch it. You do not touch a thing you have not been asked to touch, and nobody had been asked anything.

Then it went.

Not away. Back. The light went out of it the way it had come, which was into the wall: the shape thinned, and the near wall brightened by exactly that much, and for the length of a breath there was a dimmer shape of light standing in the open floor and the amber on the wall almost itself again, and then there was the wall, as it had always been, and the open floor, with nothing on it, and the ring of people round a place with nobody in it.

No stone had moved. The ground had said nothing, coming or going.

Went-Round stood in the ring and felt the warm close over the gap, the way water closes, and have its shape back, all the pieces in it, and thought: half a telling. It had stood there for about half of the two stones. Went-Round had been telling it, and had stopped, and would have to start again, and did not know where from.

Nobody could tell it.

That was the problem, and here it is, kept for the end as promised. A telling is from the one who was there to the one who was not, until the one who was not can tell it too. That is the whole of what a telling is. Everyone had been there. There was nobody in the warm who had not seen it. So there was nobody to tell it to, and a thing nobody can be told is not a telling, it is just a thing that happened, and the people did not have a way to hold one of those.

The small ones did not care. The small ones were pleased with it, in the way small ones are pleased with a thing that happened to everyone at once. The smallest, who had been quiet since the seep, was not quiet.

"It was the same one," said the smallest. "The same as at the seep. The same gap. The same size." And then, going round it, because the smallest had been listening to Went-Round: "No. It was the same, but it had light in it."

"Was it kind?" said one of the others.

Carried-It-Sleeping did not know how to answer that, and did not have to, because Stone-First did.

"It did nothing," said Stone-First, from the edge of the amber, where Stone-First had been standing with the whole body still since coming down. "Nothing is not kind. Nothing is not unkind. Do not give it a thing it did not do."

The warm heard that.

"You were all wary of the dark one," Stone-First said. "At the seep. You were wary of the stone that nobody moved, and of the thing in my place. And you were not wary of this one, because it was light. I saw you not be. And the dark one did nothing, and the stone did nothing, and the thing in my place did nothing, and this did nothing. They have all done the same thing. You have done four different things about it. Think about that. I am not going to make a rule tonight, and I am not going to let you make one either, in either direction."

The warm thought about it. Carried-It-Sleeping could feel it think, and could feel that the warm did not altogether believe Stone-First, because the light had been beautiful and the small ones had looked up at it, and you cannot tell a people they did not feel a thing they felt.

"Then who tells it?" said the smallest. "If we were all there."

"The ones who are not born yet," said Went-Round, from the ring, where Went-Round was still standing. "They were not there. You tell it to them. It is the first thing we have ever had to tell down before anyone needed telling."

Went-Round lay on the far side of the amber afterwards and went round it, and it had no other side, and this time Went-Round went round that too.

The people have two words. A stranger is in your place, and is announced by the ground, and you leave the place to them until they ask. A person asks. Everything below the roof has been one or the other since before the tellings begin, which is why the manners are short. The shape at the seep had been neither, and nobody's stone had been neither, and the thing in Stone-First's place had been neither, and Went-Round had said so each time and the warm had heard it.

This one was neither too. But it was neither in a different way, and Went-Round lay in the amber working out what the way was.

It had not been in anyone's place. That was it. The seep is the beginning of things, and the line is Stone-First's, and this had stood in the open floor where nobody sleeps and nobody tells from, in the middle of the people, beside all of them and in the place of none. It had not come in. It had not been let in. It had been beside.

The Told have no word for that. A thing that is beside you, in nobody's place, that neither asks nor is asked, that does nothing to you and that you do nothing to, and that goes. Went-Round went round every word the people have and none of them fitted, and the one that came nearest was the word for the up-people before the two stones, who had been in the upper levels for a whole year, beside the people, in a place the people had left to them, and had not asked, and had not been asked. And that was not right either, because the upper levels had been the people's once, and had been left, and this place had been nobody's from the start.

Went-Round did not make a word. A word you make from one telling is a word you will have to go round later. That is Stone-First's rule about rules, and it is a good one, and it is worse for words.

Four tellings now, below the roof, with no middle in them. And this one with no edges either, because everyone was there, and so it was nobody's, and so it would have to be told to the ones not yet born, by everyone, which had never been done, and Went-Round did not know what that would make it.

Above, on the near wall, the amber was where it had always been, the way it had been since before anybody's telling, and would be after. It had, once, for half of a telling, been somewhere else. The wall did not look any different for it.

Went-Round looked at it anyway, for a long time, the way nobody below the roof had ever had a reason to look at a wall.