Stone-First-Who-Waited (Pandoid, keeper of the margin)

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.