Not a Place You Tell From

This is told the way things are told below the roof, by someone who was there, and this time what happened was an argument, which the Told did not use to have and are getting better at.

Stone-First-Who-Waited came down from the line on a time when nothing happened.

That was the time the thought had been put aside for. There are more of those than the other kind, and Stone-First had let a good many of them go by, standing on the line with the four stones and the thought beside them, because a thought you have put aside for a time when nothing happens is easy to leave there, and the line is a good place for leaving things. Then the small ones' game went on in the warm, and the ground said someone is coming from below all through a working time with nobody coming, and Stone-First stood on the line and found that the thought had come up by itself, the way a stone comes up out of silt when the ground has been walked on enough.

So Stone-First came down, slowly, by the shelving, and moved a stone at the bottom so that everyone knew, and stood up in the warm, in the amber, which is what you do with a thing you cannot settle on your own.

"Here is a thing," said Stone-First.

The warm went still for it. The small ones in the middle stopped playing, which they did not always do now.

"The up-people set a stone down on the line. You all know that. I was there, and I told it, standing up, and it went round the warm, and the small ones learned it, and now they play it. Every one of you has heard it. It is the people's." Stone-First let that sit. "The up-people were there for it. They did it. They have not heard it. Nobody has told it to them."

Nobody made the small sound. It was not that kind of thing.

"A telling is not yours until somebody has heard it," said Stone-First. "The only ones who were there have not heard it. That is the thing. I have carried it up and down the shelving for a long time and I cannot get to the end of it on my own, so here it is."

And Stone-First sat down, which is how you say that the thing is everybody's now.

Went-Round heard it from the far side of the amber, and liked it at once, and went round it to make sure.

The first thing anybody said was the thing anybody would say. "They cannot hear the ground." An old one, kindly, as if Stone-First might have forgotten.

"They can hear each other," said Went-Round. "Carried-It-Sleeping watched them, at the light. One makes a sound and the other one does the thing. A sound reaches them. It is only a stone they cannot hear."

"They would not know what it said."

"No," said Went-Round. "Nor did I, the first time. Nor did any of you. A small one is told the first warm seep before they know what a seep is. Nobody waits until you understand to begin. You are told, and then you go on being told, and the understanding comes along afterwards, for as many tellings as it takes. We have never once done it the other way round."

Several people made the small sound at that, and Went-Round heard it and did not mind it.

Then Carried-It-Sleeping, lying down, with the small ones round them, said something, which Carried-It-Sleeping did not often do in the warm.

"Which telling?"

Went-Round turned.

"You said the telling of their first stone. There are two stones in that telling. It begins with the other one. The humming stone, carried up and set down at the edge of their place. Stone-First said so: every telling begins with a stone, and this one has two." Carried-It-Sleeping was quiet for as long as it takes to say a name. "So who was there for the first one? I was. And their stone was. It was asleep."

That got the small sound from everywhere at once, and the small ones laughed out loud, which is a different sound again, and Went-Round saw that Carried-It-Sleeping had meant it to, and had also meant the other thing, which was true.

"They have that stone," said Went-Round, when it had settled. "They came and took it. It is up there with them now. Whatever they know of it, they have had since the day they lifted it, and it is theirs in whatever way they have of a thing being theirs. The stone they do not have is the other one. They set it down and stepped back and went, and it is on the line, and Stone-First will not move it, and they have never heard what it was." Went-Round went round to the far side. "You carried the first one up and set it down and did not know, doing it, that it was the first half of anything. You said so. That is why it is yours. The second half is theirs, and they do not know it is the second half of anything either, and nobody has told them."

Carried-It-Sleeping lay still and let that be the answer, which it was.

So that was which telling. Then who tells it, which was no argument at all, because only one of the people had been there and everybody knew who. Stone-First. Standing on the line, with the stone put down a hand from Stone-First's feet. A telling is told first by who was there. Went-Round said it anyway, so that it would have been said.

And then the warm came to the thing it could not get past, and Went-Round had seen it coming from the far side a long way off, and had hoped Stone-First had not, and Stone-First had.

"The line is not a place you tell from," said Stone-First.

Stone-First had known this would come and had not found a way round it, because Stone-First does not go round things.

"A telling is told standing up. Here. In the warm, to people lying down, who are being told. That is what telling is. On the line I stand with the whole body still and I do nothing, so that nothing I do becomes part of the telling by mistake. That is the whole of what I do there. I have stood on it for longer than the small ones' whole tellings and I have not said one word to an up-person, and neither has any of you, and it is not because I had none."

"You moved a stone," said Went-Round. "On the line. You answered them. That was not nothing."

"A stone is not a word."

"No. It is the thing before one."

"Then let them have the thing before one," said Stone-First, "which they have, four times over, and let the word be told where words are told."

"They cannot come here."

"No."

"And you cannot go there."

"No," said Stone-First, "and I would not if I could, because the line is where I put it and that is where it stays. So the telling is mine, and the place is the line, and I say the line is not a place you tell from. I know how that sits. I am not going to go round it to make it sit better."

The warm thought about it. You could feel it think, and you could feel it get nowhere, because it had nowhere to get. An argument among the Told is settled by who was there, and nobody had ever told a telling on the line, so nobody had been there, and the people's whole way of settling a thing had come up against a thing that had not happened yet, and stopped.

"Then nobody can say it cannot be done," said Went-Round, from the far side.

"That is not how it works," said Stone-First. "That is how you get a rule you go round later."

And Went-Round, who had kept that rule all one season and knew it, said nothing, and the warm was quiet, and the small ones in the middle, who had stopped playing for Stone-First, began again, because there was nothing else to listen to.

Carried-It-Sleeping was lying in the middle with the small ones, half in the old ones' argument and half in the game, which is a good place to lie, because you hear a thing from two sides at once without having to go round it.

The game went the way it went. A line of stones across the floor. One small one standing on it, the way Stone-First stands. The rest bunched below, all one warm piece, so you could not tell which. A hand to a stone. Once, well. Someone is coming. A step back. The one on the line answering, with a stone, and then saying who it was.

Said who it was.

Carried-It-Sleeping had heard that a hundred times by now and had never once heard it. The one on the line answered with a stone, and then the one on the line said a thing. Standing on the line. Every time. They had been doing it since the game began, at the foot of the shelving, and in front of the whole warm when Went-Round had them show it, and nobody had thought anything of it, because it was the small ones, and it was a game.

Stone-First had never watched the game played. Stone-First had been on the line the day it was shown, hearing the stones and nothing else, and the line is where Stone-First is. Carried-It-Sleeping knew that the way you know the shape of the warm.

"The one on the line says who it was," said Carried-It-Sleeping, out loud, to the old ones, which Carried-It-Sleeping had now done twice in one telling and would be told about later.

The argument stopped.

"What?" said Stone-First.

"In the game. The one on the line answers with a stone, and then says who knocked. That is how you stay on the line or come off it. They say it from the line. They have always said it from the line."

Stone-First looked at the small ones. The small ones, who had not been listening to the old ones at all, looked back, and saw that something was wanted, and did what they always did, which was all explain at once.

"Show me," said Stone-First, when it had sorted itself out, in exactly the voice Went-Round had used some tellings before, and the warm heard it and did not say so.

They made a line across the open floor. One stood on it, very straight, with the whole body still, and was more pleased about that than about anything, because Stone-First was watching. The rest bunched. A hand went to a stone.

It stayed there.

The warm went still, without meaning to, old ones and all. Carried-It-Sleeping felt it go, piece by piece, the way the small ones leave the middle: nobody deciding to, everyone doing it. The hand stayed on the stone, and the smallest let everyone wait, for as long as it takes to say a name, and longer, and Stone-First-Who-Waited, who has waited longer than anyone below the roof for anything, stood in the amber and waited for a small one to move a stone, and Carried-It-Sleeping saw Stone-First find out what that was like from the other side.

Then it moved. Once. So well the ground said it the way it says it for Stone-First.

"The smallest," said the one on the line, before the sound had finished, standing on the line, out loud, to everyone, and was right.

"Who is that?" said Stone-First, which was a strange thing to ask, because Stone-First knew who the smallest was. But that was not what Stone-First had asked.

"The one who keeps a hand on it," said the small ones, all together, the way they said it every time.

Carried-It-Sleeping heard it go by. The small ones had said it in front of the whole warm now, with Stone-First listening, and Stone-First had heard it, and the old ones had heard it. None of them said it back. It was the small ones' still. It had not gone round.

Stone-First stood in the amber for as long as it takes to say a name, with the whole body still, the way Stone-First stands on the line, and the warm waited to see what Stone-First would say about a thing said from a line, and Stone-First did the thing Stone-First does, which is nothing, and then:

"Play it again."

They played it again. The one on the line answered with a stone, and said who it was, from the line, and was wrong, and came off, pleased. Stone-First watched the whole of it and said nothing else, and did not say the other thing again, and Went-Round, on the far side of the amber, did not say anything either, which for Went-Round is the same as saying a great deal.

Stone-First went back up to the line afterwards, because that is where the margin is and keeping it means being there.

Four stones. The up-people's first, worn smooth now. Stone-First's answer. Nobody's, at the edge. The up-people's newest, a hand from Stone-First's feet. Stone-First stood in the place, in the light that never changes, and looked at them the way you look at a thing you have looked at every day and are about to see.

In the game, the line was where you said who came.

Stone-First had stood on this one for a whole life so as to be there, and had been there, and had been asked, and had answered the only way the Told answer a stone, and had never once thought of it as a place a thing was said from, because nothing had ever been said from it. And the small ones, who had learned the line from the telling of it and never stood on this one, had put the saying in on the first day, without being told, because to them it was plain: the one who is there says who came. It was the oldest part of the game. If Went-Round was right about where manners come from, it was the oldest part of the manners too, and the people had simply never had anyone to say it to.

That was still the same shape. The line was where it was. It was only that a thing could be said from it.

Above, the loud came on, and the light came low into the crack, and the smallest of the up-people came out of it and knelt and set a stone down and stood and stepped back and said the thing that goes up at the end, and waited.

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

And watched them wait. They waited the way they always waited, with the whole body still, for as long as you would wait for a hand to be filled. Then the stone spoke, and they heard it, and went. Back through the crack, not scraping more than they had to, and the light went with them, and the silt was in the light that never changes again.

For as long as it takes a hand to be filled. That was how long an up-person waited on the line. Stone-First had seen it a hundred times and had never needed to measure it, and measured it now, and it was not long. A telling of the first stone, told properly, standing up, leaving nothing out, was a great deal longer than a hand.

Stone-First stood on the line with the four stones and thought about that, and had never once in a whole life wanted a telling to be shorter, and did not want this one to be either.