Chapter 171: The Harvest Report

"Was it a good one?" the dark asked.

"Good," I said. "Barley was heavy in the fens. Terraces were late but they came in. The coast had a poor year for fish, but the far islands sent boats, so nobody went short."

"And were people pleased?"

"Mostly. Tang complained about the price of seed at the autumn meeting. He's been complaining about it for fourteen years. I think he'd be upset if it got cheaper."

"That is the turnip man."

"That's him."

"Good," said the dark. "I like him. Go on."

So I went on. That is how the harvest report works, and it has worked the same way every autumn since the homecoming: I go down to the bottom of the world with a list and I sit on the cold floor and tell the oldest thing in creation about barley.

It does not want numbers. I tried numbers once and it was polite about it. What it wants is who was pleased and who wasn't and why, and whether the children got to eat the first of the plums, and whether old Wen's knees held up through the reed-cutting. It wants the ordinary of it.

I had got to the bit about the Greenmarch market when it stopped me.

"Lin Bo," it said. "What does it look like?"

"What does what look like?"

"A harvest."

I opened my mouth and nothing came out.

"I have held the world for ten thousand ages," said the dark. "I have held every harvest there ever was. Every field. I have heard you tell me about fourteen of them. I have never once seen one." A pause. "I would like to know what it looks like. That is all. You do not need to do anything about it. I am only saying."

— • —

I came back up and sat by the pot for a long while without lighting it.

"What's wrong with you?" said Tao Tao.

"It's never seen one."

"Seen one what?"

"A harvest. Anything. It's never seen anything." I looked at her. "Tao Tao, who hasn't come home?"

She thought about it, and I watched her get there.

"Oh," she said.

"Eight million came up," I said. "The First Author's list. Ping's list. The first age. Yuhan's valley. Su Yue. Everybody we ever went looking for came up into a field and got a chair. And Su Yue said, standing at the top of the sky, bring the dark home too, and we all said yes and meant it." I put my hands over my face. "It's been fourteen years. It's still down there. I go once a year and tell it about plums."

"It said it wanted to stay down," said Tao Tao. "It said it wanted to sit."

"It said it wanted to sit down. That's not the same as wanting to be down." I stood up. "And it just asked me what a harvest looks like."

— • —

We argued about it for three nights, and it was a good argument, because nobody knew the answer.

"It doesn't have a body," said Mu Chen. "That's the first problem. Every returned soul came up into the body they went down in. It never had one. It was never up."

"Then it can't come," said Xue Ningzhi.

"I didn't say that. I said it's the first problem." Mu Chen turned his bowl. "Su Yue didn't have one either, at the top of the sky. They were a light. And when the world held them, they came down as a person."

"Because the world believed they were a person," said Yun Shu, slowly.

Everybody looked at her.

"That's how it works," she said. "That's the oldest rule there is — older than any of us. A thing the whole world believes becomes true. Su Yue came down small and tired because everybody'd been telling Ji Lan's story about them for years and in that story they were small and tired." She put her cup down. "The world has spent years being told the dark is a tired old thing that took the worst part. Ji Lan told it. Every child under fifteen has been sung to sleep with the dark in the song. If enough people believed it was coming up for a day—"

"It would come," said Ji Lan, very quietly. "Oh. It would come."

And on my shoulder, the Scroll — which had not said a word in three nights, which is not like it — made a small sound.

"Talent," it said. "That is my job."

"What is?"

"The thing she just said. A story the whole world believes, so it comes true." It had gone a gold I had not seen it go in years — the bright, ridiculous engagement-gold from the old days, from before any of the grief. "I have not published a legend in nine years. I have filed records. I have written to a star. I have logged four hundred thatchers a week, on purpose. I have not once done the thing I was made to do, which is put a story out and let the world make it real." A pause. "I was fired from Heaven for exactly this. I was told it was a crime. I would like very much to commit it one more time."

— • —

I went to tell Su Yue before anybody else, because it was theirs first.

They were in the second tent with flour up to the elbows, attempting something that was going to be bread eventually if it survived the process.

"We're going to try to bring it up," I said. "For a day. The harvest."

Su Yue stopped kneading.

"The dark."

"The dark."

They stood there with their hands in the dough for a long moment, and then they took them out and wiped them very slowly on a cloth.

"I asked you to," they said. "At the top of the sky."

"I know. Fourteen years ago."

"I thought you'd forgotten. Everybody was so busy." They sat down on a sack. "I didn't want to bring it up again. It felt like asking for something extra, after everybody had already done the impossible thing."

"You can always ask for something extra."

"Not when you're the Lantern of the Nine Skies," said Su Yue. "When you're the Lantern of the Nine Skies, if you ask for something, eleven hundred million people drop what they're doing. So I've stopped asking for things. I make bad bread." They looked at their hands. "Is it frightened?"

"Of a child being frightened of it. That's the only thing."

Su Yue nodded slowly.

"That's right," they said. "That's exactly what it would be frightened of. It spent the whole of time keeping the world safe and it doesn't know the world knows." They got up. "When it comes up — will you tell it I'll find it? I don't want to make a thing of it in front of everybody. But I'd like it to know there's one person there who isn't afraid and isn't sorry for it. Just somebody who was the same kind of stupid, from the other side."

"I'll tell it."

"Good." They put their hands back in the dough. "And find out if it likes honey. I don't know why. I've just got a feeling."

— • —

"We have to ask it first," said Bai Qing.

"Obviously."

"No — I mean properly." She was standing at the edge of the firelight, the way she does. "Not would you like to come up and see the harvest. It'll say yes to that, because it's been asking for fourteen years without asking. Tell it what it actually means." She came in and sat down. "It means being seen. By everybody. Every returned soul who spent nine hundred years in its ocean. Every family it took someone from. It was the most feared thing that ever existed and we'd be asking it to walk into a crowd."

"Some of them won't want it there," said Tao Tao.

"Some of them will hate it," said Bai Qing. "Some of them have every right to. That has to be in the asking, or it's not a real yes."

So I went down and told it. All of it. That it would be seen. That some people would not come near it. That some would be angry and would have every right to be. That it would be a day and then it would be over, and it would come back down to the cold, because the world's belief would hold it up for a day and not for longer, and nobody knew what that would feel like.

It was quiet a very long time.

"I was feared on purpose," it said at last. "For ten thousand ages. I chose it. So that the world would keep building. You know this."

"I know."

"So I am not afraid of being feared." Another long silence. "I am afraid of a child looking at me and being frightened. That is the only one. I have thought about it for a long time while you were talking and that is the only one I cannot hold."

"I can't promise you that won't happen."

"No. I know you cannot." The cold shifted, slow. "But you would not lie to me about it. And Mu Chen would come, and sit with me, if it did."

"He'd come."

"Then yes," said the dark. "I would like to see the harvest. Tell the Scroll it may commit its crime."