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

Carried-It-Sleeping brought it up. Not a small one. Carried-It-Sleeping, by the shelving, moving a stone at the top of it so that the ground said someone is coming, and the ground said it in Carried-It-Sleeping's way, which Stone-First-Who-Waited knew, and had not heard on the shelving for a long time.

Stone-First listened standing up, on the line, with the whole body still, and Carried-It-Sleeping told it standing up too, which is not how Carried-It-Sleeping does anything: the old one, and the warm doing it without being told, and the hand, and the end held back until the telling got there. And the name. Carried-It-Sleeping told the name last, and told it the way you tell a thing that has already gone round, which is plainly.

Stone-First said nothing for as long as it takes to say a name. Then: "An old one said it."

"Yes."

"Not Went-Round."

"Went-Round went all the way round and came back. Went-Round says so."

Stone-First had stood on the line with the four stones for a season with the thing, and had not gone round it, because Stone-First does not go round things, and had not got to the end of it either, and had known, standing there, that the end of it was not on the line. It was in the warm, where things are told. So Stone-First had sent it down, the way you send a small one down with a telling, and the warm had sent it back up with a hand on it.

"Go down," said Stone-First. "Tell them I heard it."

Then Stone-First was alone with the four stones. The up-people's first, worn smooth. Stone-First's answer. Nobody's, at the edge. The up-people's newest, a hand from Stone-First's feet. And beside them the rock at the edge of the silt that Stone-First answered from every time, a good one, which Stone-First had put a hand on more times than any count and had never once kept it there.

Before the stones, the up-people had asked the dark at the end of every working time and waited and gone, and Stone-First had counted those. But that was a sound said to nobody, with no stone under it, and nobody waits long for nobody. Since the first stone they had never once waited for a stone that did not speak, because Stone-First had never once made them. The old one was right about that. Nobody knew.

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 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 bent and put a hand on the rock.

And felt it. The wanting to keep the hand there. To see. The smallest of the up-people was still with the whole body, waiting the way they waited, and Stone-First's hand was on the stone and the stone had not spoken, and nobody below the roof knew how long an up-person would wait for a stone that had not spoken yet, and Stone-First could have found out, now, with nothing on the line but a stone and a hand.

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

The stone spoke, and the up-person heard it, and went, back through the crack, not scraping more than they had to, and the light went with them.

A thing you do to see whether it works is not manners, and it is not a telling either. The first time a hand stayed on this stone, it would stay there for the telling of the up-people's own stone, told properly, standing up, leaving nothing out, to the ones who had been there for it, and it would come off when the telling was done, and not before, and not to see.

Stone-First stood on the line in the light that never changes, with the hand still on the rock a while after, which had nothing more to say, and found that the hand did not want to come off. The small ones had found that out a season ago at the foot of the shelving, playing, and had made a game of it, and now it had a name.