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 was in the rock, and the one telling it first is the one who was at the bottom of the rock and could not go in.

A stone moved at the top of the shelving. A good one. Stone-First-Who-Waited knew who it was by the sound, the way you do, and waited to be told, and the small one came up onto the silt and stopped at the edge of it, which is where you stop when the one on the line has not yet answered you.

Stone-First moved a rock. The small one came on.

It was the smaller of the two who had been trying the squeeze since Carried-It-Sleeping was named. The one who had gone up announced, a season ago, and stood beside Stone-First on the line for one asking of the dark, and gone down and told it, and got no name from it because the telling was about somebody else. Not so small now. The warm's count of tellings had put a year on everyone, and on the small ones it shows.

"I want to go up the squeeze," said the small one. "One more time."

"Why?"

"To find out if I still fit."

Stone-First looked at the small one for as long as it takes to say a name. That is a true reason. The small ones are told, from the time they can be told anything, that the squeeze closes on everyone, that the day comes when you go at it the way you always have and the rock does not let you, and that this is how you know you are not a small one any more. Everyone below the roof has had that day. Nobody is there for it but the rock.

"You asked," said Stone-First. "With a stone. That is right. And it is yours to find out and nobody else's, and I cannot find it out for you, because I have not fitted that crack since before your telling begins." Stone-First stepped aside, off the line, which Stone-First does not do. "Go. If it holds you, breathe out. I will be here."