Chapter 117: Aurelia's Secret

Ansel came back from Brannock Falls at noon with the horn-call still ringing in his ears.

He'd walked in at the lock-keeper's door, he said, with Corvel's coat over his arm. And knocked. And Corvel had opened it, an old thin god with river-gray hair, who hadn't said a word aloud in eight weeks because every time he opened his mouth nothing came out but air. And Ansel had held out the coat. And said, I think this is yours. And there's something in the pocket. You can say no.

Corvel had unbuttoned the pocket with shaking fingers. And the horn-call had come curling up out of it like fog off the river. And gone straight back into him, the way a dog goes home.

"He walked out onto the lock gate," said Ansel, "and blew it. Once. Over the falls. Every boat on the river for five miles stopped and turned toward the gate." He sat down at the kitchen table and put his face in his hands. "Then he cried. And then he made me tea. Terrible tea. I drank all of it."

Helena put a cup of hers in front of him without being asked.

"There," she said. "Now you can taste something."

* * *

That was the only good news before the south solar. I'm putting it first so that it's there.

* * *

We gathered at four. More of us than the night before Blackstack. My father and my mother and Adriana. Carol and Ignatius. Seraphina and me, with little Uriah asleep on my chest in a sling. Iselle and Saba, side by side on the settle by the window, not touching, with Roderic standing behind them. Ansel in the chair by the door. Loki on the windowsill. Thor beside him. Caitlin with the blue book. Faelan, who had asked Adriana properly this time and been told yes. Selvane, holding Helena's hand. And Wend, in Loki's crooked coat, sitting very upright on a stool by the fire with a cup of tea in both hands, because he hadn't put one down since he'd learned how to drink.

And one more, whom nobody had expected.

Thesra.

She sat in the corner farthest from the fire, a small soft gray-haired goddess in a shawl, the one who sits by the Council door and pats my hand every session and has done since I was small enough to build forts under the table. Sleep through pain. That's hers. She's the reason people in the long ward at Havenreach can rest when nothing else will let them.

She's also the one who built Aurelia's prison.

Everyone in my family knows that. My father found it out before I was old enough to remember, in a room with Mary writing and Aurelia sitting very still. I've never once heard either of them speak of it since. Thesra pats my hand. Aurelia nods to her across the Council ring. That's all.

Aurelia had asked her to come. Thesra had said yes.

* * *

Mary came. Mary doesn't come to the south solar after eight; but it wasn't eight. She sat at the end of the long table with the black book open in front of her and the pen in her hand, and didn't write anything. Just held it.

And Aurelia sat in the low chair by the fire, where she always sits. With her hands open in her lap.

They'd been open since yesterday. I'd noticed. Everybody had. I don't think I'd ever seen them open before. She always folds them, or clasps them, or holds a cup.

* * *

"I said something yesterday that wasn't true," said Aurelia. "Or wasn't the whole truth, which in this house is the same thing. I said I'd known since before there was a Greykeep. I meant this Greykeep. Your father's. With the Council Hall and the chapel and the kettle. Not the old one." She looked into the fire. "I'm going to tell it from the beginning. And the beginning is that most of you think I'm very old."

Nobody said anything. We did think that. I'd thought it my whole life.

"I'm not," said Aurelia. "I'm not yet four hundred."

Caitlin's pen stopped.

"There are gods in this Accord," said Aurelia, "who were old when the mountains were young. Thesra is one. Most of the ones who sit nearest the door at Council, because they remember when there weren't any doors." She turned her open hands over. "I'm one of the youngest gods there is. I was a woman. A queen, of the old Greykeep, the one under this one. I had a son, and a kingdom that was mostly mud and frightened people. And I prayed, for years, every night, for the people I couldn't keep alive. And one night something answered."

She looked at my father.

"Your father knows this. Some of you know it. I'm saying it again because the rest only makes sense if you remember it. Before me, every god in the world was born a god. Nobody had ever been a person first."

* * *

"And when I ascended," said Aurelia, "every other god felt it."

She looked across the room. At the corner.

Thesra lifted her head.

"Yes," she said. Her voice is soft. It's the softest voice I know; it sounds like the moment before you fall asleep. "We did. Every one of us. When a new god comes into the world, the rest of us become a little less. We'd never known that, because nobody new had come in so long. And then a woman in a mud kingdom started healing her people with her own two hands, and we all felt ourselves grow smaller. Not much. Enough."

"Enough for Othellos," said Aurelia.

"Enough for Othellos," said Thesra.

* * *

In the chair by the door, Ansel had gone very still.

"He was afraid," Aurelia said, gently, looking at him. "Not of me. Of what came after me. If one woman could do it, why not her son? Her grandson? A whole family of them, born mortal, rising up one after another, every one of them making every old god a little less." She paused. "So he went to the others. Thesra. Some who are gone now. And they agreed, between them, that I should be put somewhere. Kindly. Asleep. Where I couldn't make anyone smaller."

"I built it," said Thesra. "A house under the old wayhouse. A sleep that wouldn't end. A dream that would give her whatever she longed for, so she'd never want to wake." Her voice didn't shake. She's said it before, I think, many times, to herself. "I thought it would be kinder."

"You asked me to forgive you," said Aurelia. "Years after. When you'd seen what it did."

"Yes."

"And I couldn't. The first time. Do you remember?"

"I remember."

"And then you asked again. And again. Once a year, for years. Every year, at the same Council." Aurelia almost smiled. "And one year I said yes."

Thesra looked down at her hands in her shawl.

"And you," said Aurelia, to the chair by the door.

Ansel looked up.

"You asked too," said Aurelia. "On the hall floor. Holding your name. You didn't know how to knock, so you just stood there, and your face asked. And I said yes before you'd finished standing." She turned her open hands over. "I've forgiven every one of you who put me there. Every one who asked."

* * *

"Except one," said my father quietly.

Aurelia looked at the fire for a long time.

"Except one," she said.

* * *

"The dream," said Aurelia. "Thesra built the house. But a house is only walls. Something has to live in the rooms."

She was quiet for a moment.

"I dreamed my son was waiting for me. Small. The way he was before he was a king. Standing in a doorway, just past where I could reach. And he'd ask me why I wouldn't come." Her voice was very steady. "I've told your father that much. Years ago. I told him I came to understand it wasn't really my son. That it was the people holding me, saying what they wanted me to believe."

She swallowed.

"That was true. It also wasn't the whole of it."

* * *

"Thesra," said Aurelia. "Did you put a voice in the doorway?"

Thesra looked up. And for the first time since I'd known her, her soft face looked frightened.

"No," she said. "I made the longing. The house drew on what you wanted. I never put anyone in it. I'd never have known how." She stopped. "Othellos said he'd see to the rest. I didn't ask what that meant."

"I know," said Aurelia. "I believe you. I didn't know either, for a long time." She looked down at her hands. "But the voice that spoke through my son, in that doorway, wasn't Othellos. Othellos was cold and careful and frightened. The voice in the doorway was warm. It laughed. It wanted. It wanted me to come through that door more than anything had ever wanted anything." She paused. "And it knew exactly what to say. Every night. It knew what I longed for better than I did."

In the chair by the door, Ansel had put his hand over his eyes.

"A voice," he said, behind it. "Warm. Behind you in the dark. Telling you it's yours, if you'll only reach far enough."

"Yes," said Aurelia.

"I thought it was my own thought," said Ansel. "When I decided she had to be put away. I thought it was mine. That she'd make us all smaller and I couldn't bear it." He took his hand away. His face was gray. "It wasn't mine. Was it. Someone stood behind me and showed me that, too."

"I think so," said Aurelia. "I think he taught you to fear me. And then he waited in the doorway of the house you made, wearing my son's face."

* * *

"Ovaren," said Aurelia.

She said it quietly. And I felt every hand in the room want to close, just a little. Mine did. I held it open on little Uriah's back. Across the room, Saba's knuckles went white on the arm of the settle, and Iselle put her own open hand over them without looking.

"He told me his name," said Aurelia. "Once. Near the end. The only time he didn't speak in my son's voice. He was very proud of it. He said he was one of the first, before Thesra, before any of them. That the first gods had been so afraid of him they'd carried him across the sea and left him on an empty shore, and told each other he was gone, and never said his name again." She looked at Thesra. "Is that true?"

Thesra had gone very white.

"Yes," she said. "It was before Othellos. Before almost everyone. I was there. I was very young." She closed her eyes. "We put him on the far shore and called it done. We never spoke of him. I'd nearly forgotten him myself. In all the long years since, I never once thought of him." She opened her eyes. "I never thought a wanting god could reach across the sea. If someone on this side wanted badly enough."

"Like a mother," said Aurelia, "in a dream, wanting her son."

Thesra didn't answer.

* * *

"Kethra," said Saba.

Everybody turned.

Saba was sitting very straight on the settle, with her daughter's hand over hers. Her face was quite calm. Her voice was the voice she uses for counting threads.

"That's the far shore," she said. "That's where you put him down. Kethra."

"Yes," said Thesra.

"Where the gods were cruel," said Saba. "Where half the famines were made on purpose. Where a boy grew up with a father who stood behind him in the dark and showed him things he wanted." She looked at Thesra steadily. "Where I lived. Where my daughter was born."

Thesra didn't look away.

"Yes," she said.

"You put a wanting god on our shore," said Saba, "and told yourselves the sea was enough."

"Yes," said Thesra. "We did. I'm sorry. I'm one of the last of us left who was there. So I'm the one who has to say it. It isn't enough. But it's mine to say."

* * *

"That isn't my secret, though," said Aurelia.

She looked around at all of us. Then at my father.

"I'll tell you the secret. It's this." Her open hands trembled in her lap. "On the last night. Before your father came. Before he found the house, and came down the stair, and woke me." She took a breath. "I went to the door."

Nobody moved.

"My son was standing in it. Small. Holding out his hand. And the voice said, come through, and you can keep him. Forever. You'll never have to lose him again. And I'd lost him. Really lost him. Out here, in the world, he'd held a gate for two hundred years so that his family could get out, and I hadn't been there, and I'd never said goodbye." Her voice broke for the first time. "And I wanted him back. More than I've ever wanted anything. I'm forgiveness. I'm the goddess half the midwives in this country pray to. And I stood in that doorway with my hand on the latch, and I wanted, and I was going to go through."

* * *

"What stopped you?" said my mother. Very softly.

Aurelia looked at my father.

"Someone knocked," she said.

* * *

My father didn't move. But I saw his face. I'd never seen it do that before.

"I didn't know," he said. "I didn't know you were at the door."

"I know you didn't," said Aurelia. "You knocked on the outside of the house. I don't think you even meant to. You were feeling for a door in the dark, and you didn't want to frighten whoever was inside." She smiled, wet. "And I turned around. Just to see who it was. And when I turned back, the doorway was empty. He'd gone. Because somebody else had asked to come in, and he can't bear to be in a room where anyone's asking."

* * *

"So that's my secret," said Aurelia. "Not that I knew his name. I've known his name since the night you woke me, and I've never said it, because if you say a wanting god's name he knows you want him, and I was so ashamed of how much I had." She looked at her open hands. "When his seal came back to me on a blank page, a closed hand, I knew it at once. And I said not yet. And I let Ansel wonder whose it was. Because I couldn't bear to stand in front of this family and say: I nearly went through his door."

She looked at Ansel.

"I'm sorry. You stood in the Council Hall wondering who'd taught you to reach, and I could have told you, and I didn't."

Ansel shook his head slowly.

"I'd have done the same," he said. "I did do the same. For a thousand years."

* * *

"And I thought he was gone," said Aurelia. "After your father woke me. The voice never came again. Not once. Years and years of quiet. I told myself he'd faded, the way the old ones do when nobody says them. I told myself the sea was enough." She looked at Thesra. "We both did. Didn't we."

"Yes," said Thesra.

"It wasn't," said Aurelia. "He wasn't gone. He was across the water, raising a son."

* * *

And Saba turned her hand over, slowly, under her daughter's. Palm up. Open.

"He came up the valley when I was nineteen," she said. "In the spring. Walking. On his own. He stopped at the mill and asked for water, and I gave it to him, and he looked at me." She was quiet for a moment. "Like he'd walked a very long way to find you. Like you were the only lamp in the world." She almost smiled. "I said yes. I'll say that plainly, since everyone's being honest. He asked, and I said yes, because nobody had ever looked at me like that, and I was nineteen, and I wanted to be the lamp."

Iselle's hand tightened on her mother's.

"He stayed a year," said Saba. "Nearly. He was kind. In his way. He brought me things. Too many things. The house filled up with them." She shook her head. "And then you came, little fish."

* * *

"I've never told you this part," said Saba to her daughter. "I didn't know how. I'll tell it now, with all these people, because I think it's easier with all these people."

Iselle nodded. She couldn't speak.

"You were born at night," said Saba. "In the winter. He was there. He picked you up. He wanted to see you; he wanted everything new. And you did what babies do. You took hold of his finger." She held up her own forefinger. "Like that. In your whole fist. Very tight."

She smiled. It was the first time I'd seen her smile in that room.

"And his hand opened," said Saba.

* * *

Nobody breathed.

"He'd never had an open hand in his life," said Saba. "Not once. Not in all the long ages. Everything he'd ever touched, he'd closed on. And you took hold of one finger, and his whole hand came open, all at once, like a door. He stood there in my kitchen holding you with his hand open, and he looked at it." Her voice dropped. "I've never seen anyone look so frightened. Not before, not since."

She looked at her daughter.

"He put you down in the cradle. Very carefully. And he walked out of the door. And he never came back. Not once. Not in your whole life."

* * *

Iselle had her hand over her mouth.

"That's why," said Saba. "That's why fists, little fish. That's why I never said his name. I wasn't hiding you from the world. I was hiding you from him. Because he's spent your whole life on the other side of the valley, and the other side of everything, keeping as far away from you as he can get." She took her daughter's face in both hands. "Because you're the only thing that's ever opened his hand. And he's terrified of you."

* * *

For a long moment, nobody said anything at all.

Then Iselle took her mother's hands off her face. Gently. And held them. And looked at them.

"I opened his hand," she said slowly. "When I was one day old."

"Less," said Saba. "An hour."

"And he ran away."

"Yes."

Iselle looked down at her own hands, holding her mother's. Open. Both of them.

"He can't bear a room where anyone's asking," she said. "And he can't bear an open hand." She looked across at Aurelia. "So he isn't afraid of Carol. Or Garrick. Or any of the strong ones." Her voice was very quiet. "He's afraid of a knock on the door. And his daughter."

* * *

"Aurelia," said my father.

Aurelia looked up. Her face was wet. I'd never seen her cry. I don't think anyone in the room had, except my father, once, in a house under a wayhouse a long time ago.

"Can you forgive him?" said my father. Not unkindly. Just asking. The way he asks everything. "After all of it?"

Aurelia was quiet for a long time.

"Everyone who put me in that house asked," she said. "Thesra asked every year until I could say yes. Ansel asked with his face on the hall floor. Every one of them knocked, one way or another." She looked at her open hands. "He never has. Not once. He stood in a doorway wearing my son's face and asked me to come in. He's never once asked to be let in himself."

She turned her hands over.

"Forgiveness isn't a thing you can put on somebody. Like a coat. It has to be asked for. So no. I haven't forgiven him. Not because I won't. Because he's never knocked."

"And if he does?" said Carol.

Aurelia looked at her for a long moment.

"Then I'll have to find out," she said, "what kind of goddess I am. I've only been one for not quite four hundred years. I'm still learning."

* * *

Then my father did something I didn't expect.

He got up from his chair and crossed the room, and knelt down on the hearthrug in front of the low chair by the fire. My father, who doesn't kneel to anyone. And he took Aurelia's open hands in his own big ones.

"You told us," he said. "You could have said nothing. You sat in front of all of us and told it."

"It was late," said Aurelia.

"It was in time," said my father. "That's not the same." He held her hands. "And you didn't go through. You turned around."

"Because you knocked."

"Then we'll keep knocking," said my father. "All of us. On everything. For as long as it takes."

* * *

And Wend, on his stool by the fire, with his tea in both hands, said in his thin new voice:

"May I say something?"

Everyone turned. He didn't flinch. He was getting better at being looked at.

"He told me," said Wend slowly. "When he took my name. He said: names are for those who are asked for." He looked down into his cup. "I thought that meant he'd never be asked for. That's why he takes everyone else's." He was quiet for a moment. "Nobody's asked for him. Not in all that time. Not once. He doesn't know what it would sound like."

Nobody said anything.

"I was asked," said Wend. "Then I was taken. Then I was asked for. By a boy with a book." He looked at Faelan. "That's three. He's had none." He took a sip of his tea, very carefully. "I'm not sorry for him. I don't think I can be. But I'd like it written down. In case it matters later."

Mary, at the end of the table, began to write.

* * *

We sat there until the fire burned low. Nobody wanted to be the first to leave. Helena brought in more tea, and bread and butter, and a plate of honey biscuits that she put down in front of Aurelia and nobody else, and Aurelia ate one, slowly. Then she got up, and took the plate across the room, and held it out to Thesra.

Thesra looked at it for a long time. Then she took one.

Iselle and Saba sat on the settle with their hands open in their laps, side by side, not talking. Roderic stood behind them the whole time and never sat down.

And at about eight, Iselle turned and looked up at him.

"You can sit," she said. "If you want. You don't have to stand."

Roderic looked at her for a long moment.

"May I?" he said.

"Yes," said Iselle.

And he came around the settle and sat down beside her. Not touching. Close. And after a while, without either of them saying anything, her open hand found his.

Saba, on her other side, looked at the two hands, and then out of the window, and smiled at nothing at all.

* * *

Mary's book. That night.

Ansel took Corvel his coat. Corvel blew his call over Brannock Falls. Every boat stopped. Then he made terrible tea.

South solar. Everyone. Thesra came. Aurelia asked her.

Aurelia is not yet four hundred. She was a woman, and a queen, and a mother. The first person ever to become a god.

When she ascended, every god grew a little less. Othellos was afraid. Thesra built the house. Thesra and Ansel both asked, and were forgiven.

The voice in the doorway, wearing her son's face, was Ovaren. He taught Othellos to fear her.

The first gods carried him across the sea, before nearly everyone. Thesra was there. To Kethra.

Saba: "You put a wanting god on our shore and told yourselves the sea was enough." Thesra: "Yes."

Aurelia's secret: on the last night she went to his door, with her hand on the latch. Then Uriah knocked. She turned around.

Saba: he came up the valley when she was nineteen. She said yes.

Iselle, one hour old, took his finger. His hand opened. He ran. He never came back.

Iselle: "He's afraid of a knock on the door. And his daughter."

Aurelia: "He's never knocked."

Uriah knelt. "Then we'll keep knocking."

Wend: "Nobody's asked for him. Not once. I'd like it written down. In case it matters later."

Aurelia gave Thesra a biscuit.

Roderic sat down. He asked first.

And under that, in Aurelia's hand, fine and slightly shaking, like silver thread:

Aurelia. I went to his door. Uriah knocked on mine. I'd like them remembered in that order.