Chapter 172: Song

The Scroll asked me three times. I said yes three times. Then it published the first legend it had written in nine years, and it was the shortest legend it has ever written, and it went out down every thread there was.

[DING.] A NEW LEGEND HAS BEEN PUBLISHED.On the last day of the harvest, the dark under the world will come up to see it.It has never seen one. It would like to know whether people were pleased.Reach: everyone. Belief: climbing.Was this legend helpful?

That was all of it. No titles, no thunder. Ji Lan read it over my shoulder and said it was the best thing the Scroll had ever written, and the Scroll said I know, and then said nothing else for an hour, which for the Scroll is an ovation.

Belief was at sixty-one percent by the end of the first week and eighty-eight by the end of the third. Xue Ningzhi read the figures out every morning in a voice that got stranger every day.

"It's going to happen," she said, on the last morning. "I've checked it. It is actually going to happen."

"You sound surprised."

"I spent twelve years in the Directorate of Public Belief," said Xue Ningzhi. "I made the world believe things for a living. I never once made it believe something kind." She folded the sheet. "I did not know it would feel like this."

— • —

The harvest fair was at Sedgewater that year, which nobody planned, and which I think was the right place.

It came up at noon.

I was standing by the stone with the twenty-five names on it, and Mu Chen was beside me because he had promised, and the square was full of trestle tables and plum carts and children and a very loud man selling roast chestnuts, and then a little way off, at the end of the row of stalls, there was somebody standing who had not been there before.

I want to be honest about what it looked like, because the songs have already got it wrong.

It was an old person. That's all. Very old, past eighty, small, in a grey shawl, with grey hair and a face that was nobody's face in particular and somehow everybody's grandparent. It stood very still at the end of the stalls with its hands held a little out from its sides, the way the returned souls stand when they first come up, as if it didn't know what hands were for.

Nobody noticed it at first. A man walked past it with a basket.

Then it looked down at its own feet, standing on cobbles, in the sun, and looked up at the plum carts, and its face did something I will not try to write down.

"It's here," said Mu Chen.

"I know."

"Go on, then. I'll be right behind."

— • —

I went over. It looked at me as I came. It had grey eyes and they were very wet.

"Hello," I said.

"Hello," said the dark. Out loud. In the open air. Its voice was much smaller than it was at the bottom of the world, and creaky, the voice of an old person who doesn't talk much. "It's very bright."

"That's the sun."

"I know what the sun is." It squinted. "I've held it. I've never had it on my face." It put a hand up to its own cheek. "Is it always this warm?"

"In autumn. Not in winter."

"Oh." It thought about that. "I'd like to see winter too."

"One thing at a time."

"Yes." It looked at the stalls. "Is that the harvest?"

"That's the harvest."

It looked at the plum carts and the barley sheaves tied up on the stalls and a girl going past eating a pear with the juice running down to her elbow, and a dog stealing a chestnut, and the chestnut man shouting at the dog, and four old women arguing about the price of honey, and it stood there in the middle of all of it with the sun on its face.

"Is it a good one?" it said.

"It's a good one."

"And are they pleased?"

"Look at them," I said.

It looked at them for a long time.

— • —

Not everybody was pleased.

I want that down plainly. When people realised what it was, about a third of the square went quiet and moved away from that end of the stalls, and some of them left the fair, and a returned man from the first age — the first age — stood very straight about twenty feet away and stared at it with his whole face shaking and did not come any closer and did not go.

The dark saw him. It went very still.

"I took him," it said, quietly.

"Yes."

"For a very long time."

"About eleven thousand years."

It looked at the man for a long moment and then, very slowly — I watched it decide — it did not go to him. It did not ask anything of him. It bowed its head to him once, the small old bow of a person who knows they are owed nothing, and then it turned back to the stalls and left him to his own distance.

The man stood there a while longer. Then he walked away. He did not come back. That is his right and it is down here as his right.

— • —

Su Yue found it at the honey stall.

I did not hear the beginning. I came round the corner and the two of them were standing side by side looking at jars, a small tired person who used to be the brightest light there ever was and a small tired person who used to be the dark that light was against, and Su Yue was holding out a spoon.

"Try that one. It's heather."

The dark tried it. Its whole face changed.

"Oh," it said.

"I know."

"Is everything like this?"

"No," said Su Yue. "Some things are pancakes. I'll make you one, next time. It'll be terrible."

The dark looked at them. "You remembered everything alone," it said. "Up there."

"And you forgot everything alone. Down there." Su Yue held out another spoon. "We were both very stupid about it. Have the chestnut honey, it's better."

That is the whole of what I heard pass between them and I am not sure there was any more. They stood at the honey stall for about an hour, mostly eating honey.

— • —

It was a child that did the last part, which I should have expected, because it is always a child.

A girl of about six, who had either not been told what it was or had been told and did not care, came and stood in front of the dark in the late afternoon and looked up at it with the frank interest of a six-year-old looking at a very old person.

The dark went still. I saw Mu Chen move a step closer.

"What's your name?" said the girl.

"I haven't got one," said the dark.

"Everybody's got one."

"I took all of mine from other people," it said, carefully. "I gave them all back. I haven't got any left that are mine."

The girl thought about this with enormous seriousness.

"You can have my granny's," she said. "She's dead. She doesn't need it."

The dark did not say anything.

"It's Song," said the girl. "She was nice. She used to give me plums." She held one out, from her own pocket, a bit squashed. "Here. You have to have a plum if you're Song, that's the rule."

The dark looked at the plum in the child's hand for a long time.

Then it took it, in an old person's hand that had held the whole world for ten thousand ages and had never once been handed anything.

"Thank you," it said. "I'll look after it. The name. I'll look after it very carefully."

"It's just a name," said the girl, and ran off to find her mother.

The Scroll did not ask permission. Some things you don't.

[DING.] Filed: Song. Formerly the dark under the world. Named at the Sedgewater harvest fair by a girl of six, after her grandmother, who was nice and gave her plums.First name ever held. Not taken from anybody. Given.Talent — I have logged a great many things in my existence. I would like to note that I have just logged the end of the longest story there is, and it was a plum.

— • —

It went back down at dusk.

The world's belief had held it up for a day, and the day was ending, and it knew. I walked it to the edge of the square, by the stone with the twenty-five names on it, and it stood there with the plum in its hand.

"Same time next year?" I said.

"If they'll have me."

"Some won't. Most will."

"Yes." It looked back at the square, at the lanterns going up, at the chestnut man packing up and the dog asleep under his cart. "It was a good one."

"It was."

"And they were pleased." It turned the plum over. "I knew they were. You told me every year. I believed you." A long pause. "I didn't know it would smell like this."

Then it was not there anymore, and the place where it had been standing was only cobbles, and the evening was warm, and somebody across the square started singing the dark's lullaby — the plain warm one from the far shore — and then a few more people, and then most of the square.

Not to put it to sleep. Just because it had been there, and now it had gone home, and it had a name.

— • —

The warm — late.

I made the soup. Su Yue brought honey for it, which was a mistake, and we ate it anyway.

"Song," said Tao Tao, for about the ninth time.

"Song."

"A six-year-old named the end of the world after her gran."

"It's not the end of the world. It's the thing that held the world."

"I know what it is," said Tao Tao, "I'm saying it's got a better name than you. You've got about four hundred titles and one name and the name's the plain one. It got one name and it's off a gran who gave out plums." She lay back on the grass. "I'm jealous of the dark. That's where I am tonight."

Yun Shu leaned on me.

"Same time next year," she said.

"If they'll have it."

"They'll have it." She stole my bread. "Next year you're taking it to see winter. It asked. Everybody heard."

"Winter's hard work."

"So's a harvest," said Yun Shu, "and you've done fourteen of those." She ate. "Go down tomorrow and tell it about the dog stealing the chestnut. It'll want to know whether he got away with it."

"He got away with it."

"Then tell it that," said Yun Shu. "It'll be pleased."