Nobody Came

This is told the way things are told below the roof, by someone who was there, and this time it begins with a noise, which is not how a telling is supposed to begin, and that turned out to be the whole of the point.

Carried-It-Sleeping was lying in the warm, in the middle, where the small ones are kept, and the small ones were not in it.

That was the first thing. A warm place has a shape, and Carried-It-Sleeping had counted the pieces of it from habit for so many tellings now that the counting went on without being asked to, the way breathing does, and the count was short. Not one piece. All of them. The small ones had gone in ones and twos, the way they had learned to go, so that no single piece leaving was worth getting up for, and they had gone up toward the foot of the shelving and taken the middle of the warm with them, and the old ones were lying round a middle with nobody in it, telling, and had not noticed.

Then a stone moved.

At the foot of the shelving, where the rock stands up out of the ground in the way that makes a good stone to move. Moved well. One sound, plain and complete, and the ground said what the ground says. Someone is coming.

Nobody came. Carried-It-Sleeping had lain still for that once, a season ago, and did not have to again, because before the ground had finished saying it another stone moved. A different hand. You can tell, the way you can tell one person's feet from another's. Someone is coming. And another. And another, not so well, with a scrape in it, and a small voice at the foot of the shelving said that was you, not the ground, and several other small voices agreed.

Carried-It-Sleeping got up.

Here is what the small ones were doing, in order, because they explained it at once and all at the same time, and it took a while to get it in order.

They had made a line. Not the line; a line of their own, at the foot of the shelving, where the broken rock begins: a row of stones laid across the passage, the way the telling says the up-people's feet stopped in a row across the silt. One small one stood on it. Standing the way Stone-First stands, with the whole body still, facing the shelving, which the small one was very pleased about and said twice.

The others were below the line, in a bunch, close together, so that the warm was all one piece there and you could not tell by feeling it which of them was which. Then one of them, and the others were not to know which, put a hand to a stone and moved it. Once. Well. And stepped back, one step, the way the up-people step back from their knock. And then everyone waited, with the whole body still, for the ground to say it.

Someone is coming.

Then the one on the line answered with a stone, moved well, the way Stone-First answers, and said who had knocked. A scraped answer or a right guess put the knocker on the line instead. And a bad knock, where the ground did not say it plainly but only said noise, was you and not the ground, and did not count, and everyone said so.

That was the game. The smallest, who had not said anything yet, said what it was called, which was the thing the ground says. Someone is coming. It is a good name for a game.

"Who are you moving it for?" said Carried-It-Sleeping.

"Nobody," said the one on the line. "It's a game."

Carried-It-Sleeping had said a thing once, lying in the warm with the whole of the small ones watching to see which way it would go, and it had been true, and now it came back. A stone is so that the one who is there is not surprised by you. That is the whole of what a stone is for. A stone moved for nobody is not a stone. It is a noise, and the ground does not know the difference, and that is exactly why you do not.

"Stone-First moves a stone at the top of the shelving every time," said the smallest, going round it, because that is what happens to a small one who listens to Went-Round. "Every time. Before the silt. And nothing up there can hear it. You told us. Who is that for?"

Carried-It-Sleeping had not expected to have to answer that with all the small ones waiting. But that is what keeping is.

"That is manners," said Carried-It-Sleeping.

"So is this," said the smallest. "We are only doing it more."

"Stop until it is settled," said Carried-It-Sleeping, which was the only true thing there was to say, and went down into the warm to tell it, because a thing you cannot settle at the foot of the shelving is a thing you tell standing up.

Carried-It-Sleeping told it standing up, in the amber, and the old ones heard it the way the old ones hear a thing the small ones have done, which is kindly, and then not.

Someone said the line was not a thing to play at. Someone said the knock was the up-people's, and the up-people were not here to say whether they minded, and that was the whole point of the manners for a stranger. Someone said a stone is moved for someone, and the small ones had moved a great many for nobody, and the ground had said someone is coming over and over and nobody had come, and that was the sound of the season nobody could tell the middle of, and the small ones had made it into a game. Several people made the small sound at that, and Went-Round heard it and did not mind it.

Then Went-Round went round it.

"Show me," said Went-Round, to the small ones. "Here. In front of everyone."

They made a line across the open floor out of the stones that are always lying about the warm, and one stood on it, and the rest bunched below, and the warm went still to watch, the way it goes still for a telling.

A hand went to a stone. Went-Round watched the hand. It was a small hand, and it did the thing a hand does when it has moved a great many stones: it felt for the place where the stone would come away in one piece, and found it, and moved it, once, and let go. The ground said someone is coming. The small one stepped back. The one on the line answered, well, and then said who had knocked, and was wrong, and was pleased to be wrong, and stayed on the line.

Then the smallest knocked.

The smallest put a hand on a stone and did not move it. The hand stayed there. The small ones went still. The whole warm went still, without meaning to, the way you go still when a telling stops just before the part you are waiting for, and the smallest kept the hand on the stone and let everyone wait, for as long as it takes to say a name, and then for longer than that, until one of the old ones made the small sound by mistake, in the middle of nothing, which the old ones do not do. Then the smallest moved it. Once. So well that the ground said it the way it says it for Stone-First.

The one on the line answered at once, and said the smallest before the sound had finished, and was right, and everyone knew why.

Carried-It-Sleeping heard the rest lying down, with the small ones back in the middle, where they had been told to be, and the smallest nearest, still.

"Here is what I think," said Went-Round, to the warm, when it had settled. "Nobody is told how to move a stone. You are told what a stone is for. You are told the manners, and why. Nobody tells your hand. Your hand learns it by doing it, on stones that are for nobody, over and over, until the ground says someone the first time you mean it. Every one of us did that. We did it alone, in a passage, where nobody heard, and so nobody tells it, and so we have forgotten that we did."

The warm thought about that. You could feel it.

"And the other thing." Went-Round went round to the far side of it, where the thought looked different. "The manners say move a stone first. They have said it since before the tellings begin. Who moved the first one? Somebody did, before it was manners. Somebody moved a stone for nobody, because they liked the ground saying someone, and somebody else heard it, and waited for it, and liked that, and so they did it again. And then it was a thing you did. And then it was a thing you had to do. That is the whole of how a thing becomes manners. It is a game somebody played seriously until everyone was playing it."

Nobody made the small sound. Then several people did, all at once, which is a different sound.

"So the small ones are not doing it wrong," said Went-Round. "They are doing the beginning of it. They have gone round to the start."

Carried-It-Sleeping had said stop until it is settled, and it was settled, and not the way Carried-It-Sleeping had been going to settle it. That was all right. A thing you have done something with is yours; Stone-First had said so once, about a telling. The small ones had done something with the manners, and Carried-It-Sleeping lay in the warm, outthought by them again, a little more than the last time, and did not mind.

Stone-First-Who-Waited had heard all of it from the line.

Not the telling. The stones. For the whole of a working time, with the up-people's loud settled a long way up and the four stones at Stone-First's feet, one after another the ground had said someone is coming from below, from the foot of the shelving, and nobody had come, and Stone-First had known every time who it was, and had not moved.

A season ago that had been the worst sound below the roof: a stone moved well, by nobody, and Stone-First leaving the line for the first time in a life to go and look at it. This was the same sound, over and over, and it was small ones, and Stone-First stood on the line with the whole body still and found that the sound had changed what it was without changing anything about itself.

It was still the same shape. It was just a game now.

Here is the other thing Stone-First thought, on the line, and it is kept as Stone-First's.

The first true thing said of Stone-First was that they moved a stone first. Every time. Into every place. Everyone below the roof knows it; it is the name. What nobody tells, because nobody was there for it and it was not worth a telling, is that every time means the times when nobody was in the place either. An empty passage. A place where the warm ran out. Stone-First had moved a stone into every one of those, as a small one, for nobody, because the ground saying someone was the best sound there was and the stone was there for the moving; and had gone on doing it after the others stopped, which is how a habit gets noticed, and how a noticed thing gets said, and how a said thing becomes a name.

Stone-First had never once thought of it as a game. Standing on the line, Stone-First thought that this might be because nobody had been there to say so.

Above, the loud came on down the third passage, and the light came low into the crack, and the smallest of the up-people came out of it the way they did now, and knelt, and set a stone down, and stood, and stepped back one step, and said the thing that goes up at the end.

Stone-First answered it. A good one. Once.

And thought, moving it, that this was the thing the small ones were doing at the foot of the shelving. Exactly that. A stone set down, a step back, the ground saying someone, a stone back. The up-people had learned it by watching, which is the slowest way, and had done it late and kneeling and theirs. The small ones had learned it from the telling of the up-people doing it, and did it for fun, which is the fastest way, and, if Went-Round was right, the oldest. Nobody had told the up-people. Nobody could. They had never been told anything.

That was the thought, and it had a far side, and Stone-First did not go round to it. Not on this time.

But it was there. The telling of the up-people's first stone was Stone-First's own. It had been told standing up, and told again by people who had not been there, and the small ones had learned it, and now they played it. Everyone below the roof had heard it. The up-people, who had been there for it, had not.

A telling is not yours until somebody has heard it. Stone-First put that aside, with the whole body still, for a time when nothing happened.

The small ones played it for the rest of the telling, in the warm, in front of everyone, which was allowed now, and the old ones watched, and one or two of the old ones, when they thought nobody was looking, put a hand to a stone and moved it once, to see whether the hand still knew.

Carried-It-Sleeping lay in the middle, with all the pieces back in the shape, and listened to the ground say someone is coming more times in one telling than it had said it in the whole of the smallest's life, and nobody came, and that was the game.

Nobody had made a rule, in either direction, because a rule you make from one telling is a rule you go round later. The line at the top of the margin was still Stone-First's, and the four stones on it were still not anybody's to move, and the small ones knew that, and had not asked, and Carried-It-Sleeping was ready for the time they did.

The smallest knocked again. The hand on the stone, and the waiting, and the warm going still for it, old ones and all, longer each time, because the smallest had found out that the waiting was the best part and that it could be made longer. And the small ones below the line, who were not supposed to know who it was, said it anyway, every time, before the stone moved.

The one who keeps a hand on it.

They said it the way you say a thing about someone. Not a name. Carried-It-Sleeping had heard a thing go by twice and three times until it was worn smooth, once, lying in the warm, and knew the sound, and this was not it yet. The small ones said it. The old ones did not. It had not gone round the warm.

Carried-It-Sleeping let it go by, and did not say it, and did not tell anyone not to.

The stone moved. The ground said someone is coming. Nobody came.