The Light Went Round It

This is told the way things are told below the roof, by the one who was there, and this time there were three on the line and only one of them is telling it, and that is the whole of what there is to say about the other two.

Stone-First-Who-Waited was on the line, and the loud came down.

Here is the shape of a working time now, so that what happened can be set against it. The loud comes down the long passage, all at once and then steadily, and settles at the junction. Then it does not stay settled; one of the up-people comes on, down the third passage, to the squeeze, and lately the light comes through it, low, and the smallest of them behind the light, with a stone. That has been the shape for a year. Stone-First stands on the line for it, in the place, with the whole body still, and is there.

Stone-First was there. The loud settled. And then, before anything came on toward the squeeze, there was someone on the line.

Not in the place; beside it. An arm's length to the side, on the line exactly, facing the squeeze the way Stone-First faced it. Upright. About Stone-First's size. Still, the way Stone-First is still. Stone-First had not seen it come, because Stone-First had been looking at the squeeze, which is what you look at when the loud settles, and when Stone-First looked there it was, as if it had been standing there the whole of a life too.

No stone had moved. The ground had said nothing. Stone-First knew that without checking, the way you know your own feet; the ground at the line is the ground Stone-First has stood on longer than anyone has stood anywhere, and it had said nothing, and then there was somebody beside.

Stone-First did not turn toward it. That was a choice, and Stone-First was aware of making it. You do not turn toward a thing that has not been announced and has not asked; there is no manners for that, because there has never needed to be, and in the absence of manners you do the one thing that is always manners, which is nothing.

Stone-First could not tell whether it was warm. Nobody can, at the line. The warm runs out there. Up on the line there is only the eye, and the eye said: a shape, beside, facing the squeeze. Waiting, if a thing that has not asked can be said to wait.

Then the light came into the squeeze.

The smallest of the up-people came out of the crack the way they always did now, scraping less than they used to, the stone held to the front, the light held low, and something else on the front of them this time, small, that was not a light, that Stone-First noticed and put aside.

The light found Stone-First's feet. It always did; it came along the silt low and found the feet first and then went up, slowly, the way a person looks, and Stone-First had been looked at that way a hundred times and had stopped minding.

Then the light went to the side, and found the other one.

Stone-First saw it happen. The light lay on the silt and reached the place where the other stood, and did not go onto it the way it went onto Stone-First. It went round. A thin bright edge, all the way round the shape, and dark inside the edge, as if the light had been poured at it and had run off the outside of it and left the middle dry. And behind it, on the silt, where the light should have thrown the shape's shadow long the way it threw Stone-First's, there was no shadow at all. The silt behind it was lit as if nothing stood there.

The up-person's light stopped moving. The up-person had stopped.

Stone-First felt them stop, the way you feel the warm change shape, though there is no warm up there: by the light going still, and by the breathing, which the Told can hear at that distance and the up-people do not seem to know. For as long as it takes to say a name, nobody on the line did anything, three of them, and the light lay round the one and on the other.

Then the up-person did the thing they had come to do.

They knelt. They set the stone on the line, on the silt, a hand from Stone-First's feet. Not from the other's. From Stone-First's. They stood, and stepped back, one step, toward the crack, and said the thing, facing Stone-First, going up at the end, the way it always did, and waited.

Stone-First bent, and put a hand to a rock at the edge of the silt, and moved it. Well. Once.

The ground said so. The up-person heard it; Stone-First saw them hear it, the whole body going still in the way that means a thing has arrived.

The other one did nothing. Did not bend. Did not move a stone. Did not move. The light lay round it and it stood inside the light the way it had stood before the light came, and was asked nothing, and answered nothing.

The up-person went back through the crack, slowly, with the light held low, not running, and the light went with them, and the silt was in the light that never changes again, and there were still two on the line.

Stone-First stood on the line beside it until it was not there.

That took about as long as a short telling. Stone-First did not count it. The thing stood, in the amber and the blue-green that have no source and throw no shadow, beside Stone-First, facing the squeeze, and then Stone-First looked at the squeeze for a while, because that is what you look at, and when Stone-First looked to the side there was nobody. No stone had moved. The ground had said nothing of its going either, the same as its coming, and the silt where it had stood was silt that nobody had stood on, with no shape of feet in it, beside the four stones.

Four. The up-people's first, a year old, worn smooth. Stone-First's answer. Nobody's, at the edge, by its mark. And the up-people's newest, set down a hand from Stone-First's feet, which Stone-First would not move, because a stone moved for you is not yours to move.

Here is what Stone-First thought, standing there, and it is the thing Stone-First carried down and told, and it is kept as Stone-First's.

The up-people cannot hear the ground. The youngest found that out first, standing at the edge of their light while they looked at their little glowing things, and it has been true every day since: they do not hear a stone, they do not feel the warm, they know where you are by looking. That is the whole of what they have. Their light.

And their light had come along the silt and found two on the line, and gone onto one and round the other, and the smallest of them had stood there with the light in their hand and seen that, and had then put the stone down a hand from Stone-First's feet. Not from the other's. They had told the two apart. With nothing but a light, they had told apart the one who could answer from the one who could not, and had asked the right one.

Stone-First, who hears the ground, and has stood on it for a whole life, had not been able to tell what the other one was.

That was still the same shape. The people knew a thing about the up-people the up-people did not know, which had been the shape since the youngest's first telling. It was only that now, for the length of one knock, it had run the other way.

Stone-First told it standing up, in the warm, and said the light went round it three times, and said nothing else three times, and the warm did not make the small sound, and Went-Round had expected that and went round it anyway.

"It was beside you," said Went-Round.

"On the line. An arm's length."

"Facing the squeeze."

"The way I face it."

"And it moved no stone, and it did not answer theirs, and they put the stone down by your feet and not by its."

"Yes."

"Then they asked you," said Went-Round, "and they did not ask it. They had two to ask and they chose. Think about that. We have been saying since the seep that we have no word for a thing that is neither a stranger nor a person. They had a thing to do with it, and they did it: they did not ask it. That is the nearest anyone below the roof has come to a word. The one not asked."

The warm thought about that. Went-Round felt it think.

"That is not a word," said Stone-First.

"No. And I am not making one. A word you make from one telling is a word you go round later; that is your rule and I have kept it all season." Went-Round let the warm settle. "But it is a thing to call it by, until there is a word or there is not. They did it to it, and we saw them do it, and it is theirs and we can say it."

The smallest, in the middle, who had the first telling and had been quiet since the light in the warm, said: "Was it the same one? As the seep?"

"Nobody was at the seep but you," said Stone-First, "and nobody was on the line but me, and neither of us can say. You know that. You said it first."

The smallest knew it, and did not mind, which Went-Round noticed. The small ones had learned, this season, to hold a telling with no middle and not drop it. They had learned it faster than the old ones. Went-Round put that aside to think about on a time when nothing happened.

Went-Round lay on the far side of the amber afterwards and went round the season, which is a thing you can do once a season has an end on it, and this one had.

A shape at the seep with no warmth. A stone moved by nobody. A shape in Stone-First's place. A light out of the wall. A shape in the squeeze where the rock is, seen by a small one the rock had closed on. And a shape on the line beside Stone-First, with the up-people's light poured round it, asked nothing, answering nothing, gone with no stone moved. Six tellings, and not one of them had a middle, and the people had held every one and dropped none, and had made no rule, and had made no word, and were still here, in the warm, with the amber on the one wall and the blue-green on the other and the shape of the warm whole, all the pieces in it.

Went-Round did not know what the five things were. Nobody did. Went-Round had gone round every one of them and found no other side, and had said so each time, and the warm had heard it, and that was the whole of what Went-Round had to give and it had turned out to be enough, which Went-Round had not expected.

Here is the other thing, and it is the one Went-Round will tell to the ones not born yet, since that is who the season's tellings are for.

For a whole life the people had known where the up-people were and the up-people had not known where the people were, and that was the shape of things. Then a stone each way, and the shape held, only closer. Then this season, and six things that neither people could hear or feel or ask, standing in both their places. And at the end of it, for the length of one knock, the up-people had stood on the line with their light and told the one who could answer from the one who could not, and the people had not been able to, and Stone-First had come down and said so, standing up, in front of everyone, because leaving it out would have been leaving out.

So each people had a thing the other did not. That had always been true. It had just never before been true about the same thing at the same time, on the same line.

Went-Round did not know what the up-people had made of the one not asked. That was not the people's to know. They had not been told, and they had not told, and the stone was where the up-person had set it, a hand from Stone-First's feet, and Stone-First would not move it, and the telling had an end.

Above, the amber was where it always was. Went-Round looked at it anyway.