Re-Awakening: I Ascend with a Legendary class

Chapter 876: What Grew

Clovelle folded them home in the dark.

She did it without being asked. She took one look at Almond’s face after Hessa spoke, and held out her hand. Almond took it. Big D took his, and Rudra took Big D’s, and Kael came last.

Corvin did not come. He stood at the new brown stones of Ravengard’s line with his arms crossed.

"Go on," he said. "I’ll walk these lot back to the Door. Somebody has to tell them where the good firewood is." He looked at Almond. "And then you send someone to tell me what it is. Don’t make me walk all the way to Brightwater."

"I’ll send someone."

"Send the cook," said Corvin. "He brings food."

Clovelle folded the ground.

Hessa told them what she saw on the way. She held on to Kael with one hand and kept the other over her eyes, and talked between folds.

"It’s not big," she said. "It’s growing up out of the dish. It’s gray, like the seed was. Ainen hasn’t moved."

"Is it hurting him?" asked Rudra.

"No. He’s smiling, I think. It’s hard to tell. He’s got his back to me." She went quiet for a fold. "Lily’s there. And Kayla. And John."

"John’s at Brightwater?" said Big D.

"He came home with us. He said he wanted to see the dish."

They came in under the south gate an hour before midnight.

The town was quiet. The young tree in the square stood dark against the stars. But the great hall’s door was open, and firelight was coming out of it, and Almond could hear people talking inside in low voices.

He went in first.

The long table had been pushed back against the wall. Everyone was gathered at the far end of the hall, around the hearth.

Saffa and Fraisea stood behind Ainen. Kayla sat on the bench with Lily beside her. John stood a little apart, with his hands in his pockets, looking down.

Ainen was kneeling on the warm stones in front of the fire, exactly where Hessa had said. He had the clay dish in both hands.

Lily looked up when Almond came in. She held out her hand without getting up, and Almond went and took it.

"You’re back," she said.

"I said I would."

"I know. I was counting." She tipped her head at Ainen. "Look."

Almond looked.

The gray seed had split. Its two halves lay in the bottom of the dish like the shell of a nut. Out of the middle of them, something had grown.

It was about as tall as Almond’s hand. It was gray, the same soft gray as the small thing that had sat across from Ainen at the bottom of the world.

It had come up out of the seed as two thin shoots, side by side. Then, at the top, the two shoots had bent toward each other and met, and grown together.

It made an arch. It was small and perfect and gray, like a doorway for a mouse.

And inside the arch, there was light.

It was only a thread of it. It hung in the middle of the little doorway, thin as a hair, and it moved slowly like the light on the great Door. It was the color nobody had a name for.

"Oh," said Rudra, behind him.

Big D had come in last. He stood at the edge of the firelight with the book under his arm and did not come any closer.

"How long?" he asked.

"Since this morning." Ainen did not look up. His voice was soft. "I came in to check the fire. The seed was warmer than it’s ever been. I picked up the dish, and it split right there in my hands."

He turned the dish a little so the firelight caught it. "It grew all day. It stopped growing about an hour ago, when the light came."

"Does it do anything?" asked Kael.

"I don’t know yet."

Ainen put one hand flat on his chest.

"It’s got a thread," he said. "Like everyone who’s ever eaten at my table. I felt it start this morning. It’s very small. But it’s there." He looked down at the little arch. "Two bowls of stew and half a loaf of bread. That’s all it ever carried."

"The gatekeeper said it didn’t know what that grows into," said Lily.

"Now we do," said Ainen. "Sort of."

Almond looked at John.

John had not said anything. He was standing a little way off, the way he stood when he did not want anyone to look at him. His hands were in his pockets. His eyes were on the arch.

"John," said Almond. "Have you ever seen one of these?"

"No," said John.

He said it simply. Almond believed him.

"The thing it came from opened worlds," John went on. "It built gates and doors. That’s what it was for." He took one hand out of his pocket and rubbed the back of his neck. "I suppose that’s all it knew how to make."

"A door," said Big D.

"A door."

"To where?"

John shook his head.

"Doors go somewhere," Big D said. "That’s the whole point of them."

Nobody answered. The fire popped in the hearth.

"He said the Door was the last one," Lily said quietly. "The man who went first. He said if it closed, nobody would ever have to climb again, because there was nowhere left to climb to."

"He did say that," said John.

"He was wrong about one thing already." Lily put her hand on her stomach. "Maybe he was wrong about two."

Clovelle had come in after Big D. She sat down heavily on the end of the bench beside Lily. She had folded all day and half the night, and her face was gray with it. She leaned back against the wall and shut her eyes.

After a moment, she opened them again.

She sat up. She looked down at her own hands.

"That’s strange," she said.

"What is?" asked Fraisea.

"I’m not tired." Clovelle looked at Lily. "I was about to fall over. I sat down next to you, and now I’m not."

Lily did not look surprised.

"It does that," she said. "Since this morning. Kayla noticed."

Kayla nodded.

"Anyone who sits close to her for a while," Kayla said. "The tired goes out of them. It doesn’t last long. But it’s real." She looked at Lily’s stomach with her healer’s eyes. "I think it’s the imprint. Everyone."

"What’s it doing?" asked Almond.

"Carrying them," said Big D.

They all looked at him.

"That’s what it knows how to do," Big D said. "It got carried the whole way here. So it carries back." His rasp was quiet. "Just a little. Just the ones close by. It’s small yet."

Lily laughed. Her eyes were wet.

"It hasn’t even been born," she said.

"Neither had the seed," said Big D. "Look what that did."

Ainen got up at last.

He stood carefully, with the clay dish in both hands, and carried it to the long table against the wall. He set it down there in the middle, where everyone could see it. He moved two candles closer so the little arch stood in a ring of light.

"It ate at my table," he said. "So it stays at my table. Until we know."

"And if it opens?" asked Rudra.

"Then I’ll set another place," said Ainen.

They stayed up late around the dish. Nobody wanted to go to bed.

Kael fell asleep sitting up against the wall. Rudra told the story of the Dimmer, badly, and Saffa corrected him. Hessa sat at the end of the bench with her hand over her eyes, and said she was only checking the road, and did not say anything else.

Almond sat with Lily. He kept his hand on her stomach, and twice more he felt the small soft push from inside, like someone knocking.

John sat by himself at the far end of the table, close to the dish.

He did not touch it. He sat with his chin on his folded arms and looked at the thread of light inside the little arch. He looked at it the way he had looked north from the wall, the night before the tide came.

Big D sat down across from him.

"You’re thinking something," said Big D.

"I’m always thinking something."

"You’re thinking something you don’t want to say out loud."

John was quiet for a long time.

"When I came out of the nothing," he said at last. "The first time. After I stopped looking for them." He did not take his eyes off the arch. "I told you I didn’t come out here."

"You did."

"I came out through a door like this one," John said. "A small one. In the dark. I didn’t know who’d made it. I never found out." He shook his head slowly. "I’ve wondered about it ever since."

Big D did not say anything. He opened the book, and wrote a line in the margin, and closed it again.

It was nearly dawn when the thread of light moved.

Almond saw it first, because he was the only one still awake besides John. The thin line inside the arch flickered. Then it widened, slowly, the way the great Door widened when someone was coming through.

The arch filled with light.

It was small, no bigger than the palm of a hand. But Almond could see through it now. He leaned closer, and so did John, and they both looked.

On the other side of the little arch there was a sky. It was pale blue, a morning sky, with no clouds in it.

Under it lay a field of tall gold grass, and far off across the field, so small that Almond could barely see it, stood a ring of white stones.

It was a line. It was a line in a place none of them had ever seen.

John had gone still beside him.

Then something moved on the other side.

A small hand came up out of the gold grass, close to the arch. It was a child’s hand, brown and dusty. It pressed flat against the light, from the other side, the way you press your hand against a window.

And it stayed there.