Chapter 145: Open Doors

The fisherman turned back to his line as if the conversation had ended.

Rishin let go of Vina’s shoulder slowly. His knuckles took a while to lose their color.

"Where do new arrivals sleep?" he asked.

"Wherever the doors are open." The fisherman nodded along the ledge without looking.

"When somebody goes down and does not come back, their door gets left open. That is the rule on this rim. Pick one. Nobody is going to come back up and argue with you."

Logan followed the nod.

The cliff above the ledge was full of doors. They were cut straight into the rock at every height, some reached by steps and some by ladders bolted to the stone. Most of them were shut. A great many were not.

’Every open one is somebody who went down,’ he thought. ’And never climbed back up to close it.’

Alice crouched down a little way from the fisherman, careful to stay back from the edge.

"And yours?" she asked. "Is your door open?"

The fisherman reeled in a short length of line and let it out again.

"Mine is shut," he said. "I came in with four others. They went down, and I stayed up here to wait for them, because somebody had to be here when they came back."

He gave the line a small tug and waited.

’He waited,’ Alice thought. ’Rishin said the ones who wait too long never leave. He was not talking about some idea. He was talking about this man.’

"The rim is not the only place it happens," the fisherman added. "Every layer has its stayers, as far down as anybody has ever been. You will meet some of them. Try not to become one."

"What is your name?" Vina asked, from behind her mother.

The fisherman looked at her, and the corner of his mouth lifted.

"Oddren," he said.

"I’m Vina."

"Good name," Oddren said. "Keep it."

The house they chose sat a short climb above the ledge, at the top of a flight of steps worn smooth in the middle.

Its door stood open onto a set of rooms carved straight into the cliff.

There was a hearth with cold ash in it, a table with three stools, and a row of pegs along one wall. A coil of rope still hung from one of the pegs.

A pair of boots stood just inside the door, side by side, as if their owner had stepped out of them and meant to step back in.

Helen stopped on the threshold.

"This is somebody’s home," she said.

"It was," Rishin said.

Helen did not move. Daniel stepped past her, bent down, and picked up the boots. He did not throw them out. He carried them to the wall beside the hearth and set them down there carefully, toes together, where they would not be kicked.

’He spent his whole life working with his hands for other people,’ Logan thought. ’He never once treated their things like they were worth nothing.’

Daniel came back and held out his hand to his wife, and Helen took it and walked in.

The house was far too small for the units.

Terry planted himself in the doorway. Billy parked at the bottom of the steps where he had a view of the entire ledge. Solveig followed Vina inside and chose the corner nearest to wherever she happened to be standing.

The rest spread out along the ledge below. Xairon drifted up the cliff face and began examining the other doors with open professional interest, which Logan decided not to ask about.

Sonic had not stopped glancing at the drop since they left the platform.

"You said you would tell me," he said to Rishin. "About the first layer. What it does to things that fall fast."

Rishin lowered himself onto the top step.

"The walls of the first layer are full of nests," he said. "There are birds there that the rim calls hookwings. They are about the length of your arm, with a beak shaped like a gaff. By themselves, they are nothing to you."

"Then what is the problem?"

"There are thousands of them. They do not chase. They wait along the walls and watch for anything moving fast through open air. When something goes past, they all leave the walls at once from every side."

Rishin turned his hand over, fingers closing slowly like a net.

"They do not need to be faster than you," he said. "They only need to already be where you are going."

Sonic looked out at the drop, and the static along his arms died down.

"So I walk," he said at last.

"You walk," Rishin agreed. "With the rest of us."

Martha and Winsmoke had the hearth lit before anybody thought to ask them.

Baldrun Ironhearth joined them without being asked, which Isolde pretended not to notice. Within a very short time three Mythic cooks were arguing over one small stone hearth, and the house smelled better than it had any right to.

Vina ate two bowls and fell asleep at the table with her cheek on her arm.

Solveig left his corner and took up a new position directly behind her stool.

Garen sat on a stool with Lisbell on his knee. Isolde sat beside him with her shoulder against his, and both of them kept looking out at the open doors across the gap.

"He told us what this place was," Isolde said, too low to wake Vina. "I thought I understood it."

"So did I," Garen said.

Logan and Alice sat on the top step outside, beside Terry’s feet.

From up here they could see the whole curve of the rim. There were lanterns strung along it as far as the haze allowed. Below the lanterns there was nothing, and the nothing went down further than Logan’s eyes could follow.

"I counted the doors," Alice said. "The open ones, along this stretch of cliff."

"How many?"

"I stopped at forty." She pulled her knees up and rested her chin on them. "I did not want to know the rest."

Logan took her hand. He did not have anything to say that would make the number smaller.

"If I went down," Alice said, "and you were the one up here. Would you wait for me?"

"No," Logan said. "I would come down after you."

"Good." She squeezed his fingers. "That is the right answer."

’Forty doors on one stretch of one rim,’ he thought. ’And the fisherman said there are stayers on every layer. Nobody opens a door for them. They are still alive down there.’

Helen found the marks when she went to put Vina’s jacket over her.

They were on the frame of the inner doorway, cut shallow into the stone with a knife. They were short lines with a little space between each one, starting down near Helen’s knee and climbing.

Each one was higher than the last.

Helen did not call anyone over. She stood there with Vina’s jacket in her hands and looked at the marks, and then she reached out and touched the highest one with two fingers.

It was only a little higher than Vina stood.

Logan saw it through the doorway. So did Rishin, who had come up the steps behind him.

Rishin’s eyes went to the doorframe. Then he turned around and went back down the steps to the ledge. He sat down at the very edge with his back to the house.

Helen took her hand away from the stone. She tucked the jacket around her daughter’s shoulders and sat down on the floor beside Vina’s stool, with one hand resting on her back.