Nevertheless. Once he’s capable of standing and the sun has helped to clear his mind somewhat, Schaffa holds Nassun, there beside what remains of you. She doesn’t weep. Mostly she’s just numb. The others come out, Tonkee and Hjarka joining Danel, and they stand with Schaffa and Nassun while the sun sets and the Moon rises again. Maybe it’s a silent memorial service. Maybe they just need time and company to recover from events too vast and strange to comprehend. I don’t know.
Elsewhere in Corepoint, in a garden long since gone to wild meadow, I and Gaewha face Remwha – Steel, Gray Man, whatever – beneath the now-waning Moon.
He’s been here since Nassun made her choice. When he finally speaks, I find myself thinking that his voice has become so thin and weary. Once, he made the very stones ripple with the wry, edged humor of his earthtalk. Now he sounds old. Thousands of years of ceaseless existence will do that to a man.
He says: “I only wanted it to end.”
Gaewha – Antimony, whatever – says, “That isn’t what we were made for.”
He turns his head, slowly, to look at her. It is tiring just to watch him do this. Stubborn fool. There is the despair of ages on his face, all because he refuses to admit that there’s more than one way to be human.
Gaewha offers a hand. “We were made to make the world better.” Her gaze slides to me for support. I sigh inwardly, but offer a hand in truce as well.
Remwha looks at our hands. Somewhere, perhaps among the others of our kind who have gathered to watch this moment, are Bimniwha and Dushwha and Salewha. They forgot who they were long ago, or else they simply prefer to embrace who they are now. Only we three have retained anything of the past. This is both a good and bad thing.
“I’m tired,” he admits.
“A nap might help,” I suggest. “There is the onyx, after all.”
Well! Something of the old Remwha remains. I don’t think I deserved that look.
But he takes our hands. Together, the three of us – and the others, too, all who have come to understand that the world has to change, the war must end – descend into the boiling depths.
The heart of the world is quieter than usual, we find as we take up positions around it. That is a good sign. It does not rage us away at once, which is a better one. We spell out the terms in placatory fluxes of reverberation: The Earth keeps its life-magic, and the rest of us get to keep ours without interference. We have given it back the Moon, and thrown the obelisks in as a surety of good faith. But in exchange, the Seasons must cease.
There is a period of stillness. I know only later that this is several days. In the moment, it feels like another millennium.
Then a heavy, lurching jolt of gravitation. Accepted. And – the best sign of all – it sets loose the numberless presences that it has ingested over the past epoch. They spin away, vanishing into the currents of magic, and I don’t know what happens to them beyond that. I won’t ever know what happens to souls after death – or at least, I won’t know for another seven billion years or so, whenever the Earth finally dies.
An intimidating thing to contemplate. It’s been a challenging first forty thousand years.
On the other hand… nowhere to go, but up.
***
I go back to them, your daughter and your old enemy and your friends, to tell them the news. Somewhat to my surprise, several months have passed in the interim. They’ve settled into the building that Nassun occupied, living off Alabaster’s old garden and the supplies that we brought for him and Nassun. That won’t be enough long term, of course, though they’ve supplemented it admirably with improvised fishing lines and bird-catching traps and dried edible seaweed, which Tonkee seems to have figured out a means of cultivating down at the water’s edge. So resourceful, these modern people. But it is becoming increasingly clear that they’ll have to go back to the Stillness soon, if they want to keep living.
I find Nassun, who is sitting alone at the pylon again. Your body remains where it fell, but someone has tucked fresh wildflowers into its one remaining hand. There’s another hand beside it, I notice, positioned like an offering near the stump of your arm. It’s too small for you, but she meant well. She doesn’t speak for a long while after I appear, and I find that this pleases me. Her kind talk so much. It goes on for long enough, though, even I get a little impatient.
I tell her, “You won’t see Steel again.” In case she was worried about that.
She jerks a little, as if she’s forgotten my presence. Then she sighs. “Tell him I’m sorry. I just… couldn’t.”
“He understands.”
She nods. Then: “Schaffa died today.”
I had forgotten him. I should not have; he was part of you. Still. I say nothing. She seems to prefer that.
She takes a deep breath. “Will you… The others say you brought them, and Mama. Can you take us back? I know it’ll be dangerous.”
“There’s no longer any danger.” When she frowns, I explain all of it to her: the truce, the release of hostages, the cessation of immediate hostilities in the form of no more Seasons. It does not mean complete stability. Plate tectonics will be plate tectonics. Season-like disasters will still occur, though with greatly decreased frequency. I conclude: “You can take the vehimal back to the Stillness.”
She shudders. I belatedly recall what she suffered there. She also says, “I don’t know if I can give it magic. I… I feel like…”
She lifts the stone-capped stump of her left wrist. I understand, then – and yes, she’s right. She is aligned perfectly, and will be so for the rest of her life. Orogeny is lost to her, forever. Unless she wants to join you.
I say, “I will power the vehimal. The charge should last six months or so. Leave within that time.”
I adjust my position then, to the foot of the stairs. She starts, and looks around to find me holding you. I’ve picked up her old hand, too, because our children are always part of us. She stands, and for a moment I fear unpleasantness. But the look on her face is not unhappy. Just resigned.
I wait, for a moment or a year, to see if she has any final words for your corpse. She says, instead, “I don’t know what will happen to us.”
“‘Us’?”
She sighs. “Orogenes.”
Oh. “The current Season will last for some time, even with the Rifting quelled,” I say. “Surviving it will require cooperation among many kinds of people. Cooperation presents opportunities.”
She frowns. “Opportunities… for what? You said the Seasons would end after this.”
“Yes.”
She holds up her hands, or one hand and one stump, to gesture in frustration. “People killed us and hated us when they needed us. Now we don’t even have that.”
Us. We. She still thinks of herself as orogene, though she will never again be able to do more than listen to the earth. I decide not to point this out. I do say, however, “And you won’t need them, either.”
She falls silent, perhaps in confusion. To clarify, I add, “With the end of the Seasons and the death of all the Guardians, it will now be possible for orogenes to conquer or eliminate stills, if they so choose. Previously, neither group could have survived without the other’s aid.”
Nassun gasps. “That’s horrible!”
I don’t bother to explain that just because something is horrible does not make it any less true.
“There won’t be any more Fulcrums,” she says. She looks away, troubled, perhaps remembering her destruction of the Antarctic Fulcrum. “I think… They’re wrong, but I don’t know how else…” She shakes her head.
I watch her flounder in silence for a month, or a moment. I say, “The Fulcrums are wrong.”
“What?”
“Imprisonment of orogenes was never the only option for ensuring the safety of society.” I pause deliberately, and she blinks, perhaps remembering that orogene parents are perfectly capable of raising orogene children without disaster. “Lynching was never the only option. The nodes were never the only option. All of these were choices. Different choices have always been possible.”