Chương 5: Chapter 04 - Two Gates by Six Months

Calder Tannerson · Age six months"Hands first. Settle the hands, then you go looking." A stool scraped in the dark. His mother at the hearth, teaching nobody, an hour before her students woke.

"You don't go grabbing. Tell them twice and they still grab." Old news, Mistress.

"Slow on the inside, sugar. Slow." A pause while she found the next part.

"And you run it every day. Every day, or it silts up and you're digging it out again." Three a day. Has been for a month.

"Then when it's clean you'll feel the far wall. Somewhere in the far wall there's a gate to the next one." A laugh at herself, low.

"That's the part they never believe until they've felt it." Found mine on a Tuesday, three weeks before she thought to mention it. Or whatever they call Tuesday here. She had read it to him out of the soft-cornered book five weeks back, one line among a hundred, and gone on to the next page. He had been working it ever since. The words are hers. The practice I can use. Gate, then. Not valve. He ran the sweep. Morning, midday, before sleep, because the book said once and once was a number somebody had picked.

Three trials, one variable. At three a day the silt did not come back. Then he put himself against the gate, once a day, the same as he had every morning for six weeks. A spot on the far wall that was not wall. A divot, and his warmth catching on the rim coming out, a fingertip hanging on a screw hole. He leaned on it. Nothing. The same nothing as yesterday, and the forty before it. Sealed. Mine to open, and the body will not. That was when Maren came in.

"Sugar." She lifted him without ceremony.

"Look at you, up before me. Practicing your scowl, hmm? Like your father." She settled him latched.

"I do mine first thing. If I wait for the students I won't get to it. Your aunt Nessa has opinions when I'm short by lunch, and she will walk the footbridge to deliver them. You and me, sugar." And the dantian filled. From the milk and the holding and the low sound she made, all of it. There is the fuel. Now spend it properly. Forty mornings leaning on it steady, and steady was the variable he had never changed. Load it and let go. Water hammer. You do not push a stuck valve, you hit it.

He packed the whole feed against the divot, held until it hurt, and dropped it all at once. The gate gave. Then the tank went with it. Everything she had just put in, gone in the half-second it took, and the bottom of him scraped bare. Empty. Not tired. Empty. Nobody quoted me a price and I paid it in full. The body picked that moment to void itself, which was its own business and nothing to do with the work. Below the first, the channel cleared into the slow warmth he had felt pulling in since birth.

Filling on its own the whole time, waiting on a road. A second space. His now. Outstanding. Two gates by six months, and I am too flat to lift a finger about it. Put it in the after-action. Subject achieved a developmental milestone and a full diaper in the same minute and could not tell you which one cost him more. The gate gave because it passed inspection. That is not the same as holding. Nothing holds because you opened it. It holds because you keep it. Maren wrinkled her nose and laughed.

"That's my boy. Hold that thought, sugar." She had him cleaned and changed before the warmth settled. He let her. Glamorous work, soldier. Then she stopped. Half a breath. Head tilting, catching a sound under the floor. She had students waiting. He felt her decide. She passed him to Bram.

"Fed, mostly clean, and now in a mood. Good luck." A laugh, a hand on his father's arm, and Mistress Maren went out into her day. Bram settled him against the shoulder, a hand to the top of his head. Palm to the crown, once, and off.

"Morning, Cal." Airborne.

"Guh." Morning, Dad. Close enough. The smell hit first. Cal pressed his fist over his nose before his father cleared the door. Oiled hide, woodsmoke, and under both the wet animal reek of a hide still curing. Cure that outside. Or vent it. Bram carried him into the heat. Cal worked the bench with his eyes. Tools sorted by reach, fine to rough. The repair pile was a queue. One piece at the bottom had gone dark and dry from sitting, a satchel with its seam blown clean through. That seam goes next. That came free.

I did not go looking for it. This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. First room with made things in it, and the thing wakes up with its mouth full. It was never broken. It was starving. Bram set him in the crate and took up a strap.

"Stitch here carries the whole load." A hole punched. Waxed thread drawn slow through the leather.

"Wet gets in at the fold. Rots it from the inside, where you can't see it." His hand went out past the edge of the bench, closed on nothing, and came back with a second awl in it. A band on his middle finger, plain, worn smooth. That was not on the bench. I ran the bench, fine to rough, and it was not on it. Another pull, no faster than the last.

"Man'll swear it was fine yesterday. It was. Wasn't fine underneath." He does not know he said it. His hand came off his nose and swung at the pile. Arm straight, finger out, a chop at the bad satchel.

"Bah," he said.

"Da. Bah-da." Bram tracked the fat baby arm to the blown satchel. The waxed thread went slack between his fingers, and the plank-laying stopped where it stood. Then it drew again.

"Well." And nothing after it. Cal's fist went back to his mouth and he let it. Then he felt it. Something turned its attention on him from inside his own body, out of the blank quarter where the written notices surfaced. No notice this time. The looking went the other way. He went still. Not the trained stillness he put on for the room. The kind a small animal finds when something large goes quiet nearby. Someone reads these. Something just found me. An administrator, then.

A hand behind the fine print, and no proof of any of it. He held still and did not look away. ～～～～～ THE ADMINISTRATOR ～～～～～ Something in you has come open that was shut since birth, and the warmth you have carried since your first breath has somewhere to go at last. You did that yourself. Almost none do, and none so young. It will not close again, but it is yours to tend now, or to let go quiet. Title Granted...... Twin-Welled Earth Dantian...... opened (Second of Seven) Experience Points Awarded......

+5, 000 ～～ THIS IS HOW HEROES ARE CREATED. ～～ Half a morning late. It watched me do it at dawn and filed the paperwork after lunch. Five thousand. Paid out for a thing my own body did on a schedule I did not set. Somebody is keeping books on me, and the books are not in my name. And not one word about the boon. You said it settles overnight, and that was five months back. Sapper and Ranger at twenty-six, and a bird-colonel at the chow line telling me to try not to die. That was the whole ceremony.

Blue came into the workshop. There's my puppy. Nine months of dog and not done, coat steel-grey and rough, legs still running out ahead of her. Big enough to ride. She padded up and pushed her nose along his collar, a soft chuff through it. She stopped short of his face. Then she curled into a ball beside him. First obstacle. Mount the wall, over the top, vault onto Blue and grab a fistful of collar. Off we go. The six-month body voted otherwise.

A weak scramble up the bars, a tip past the lip, a fall, a splash into thick fur. He gave the room a cheerful "gah" on the way down. The arm had its own plan. It slid, not gripped. The whole forearm dropped clean through the loop of her collar before the hand had a vote. That's not where I… Blue decided, calm about it. She knew his smell. She knew his weight. She relocated. The collar came tight on his elbow. The floor left.

He went after her in a long graceless skid, one arm threaded to a wolfhound's neck, the rest of him cargo going by sideways. A long way from the PLF I trained ten years for. He kept the arm where it was and let it scream. Wrong hold. The loop has me and the dog has the loop. Fine. No ride. Salvage it. He quit fighting her and started reading her. Weight through the collar, not against it. Stop being a sack and start being a load with a shape. She is not a mount. She is a frame.

He waited for the fall of her shoulder and threw himself into it. The roll came. Hip, then shoulder, then belly, the whole of him coming over in one piece and landing square on his front with both arms under him and his head up. Not dragged. Riding. Bracing, never carrying. Log it and build on it. She is the frame until the legs are. Then the bottom went out again, the same as the morning. The arms quit. The floor came up and took the whole thing back.

Blue stopped and sat, and Cal went down with her, hip and shoulder taking the boards in a run of small bounces, the last of them across the lip of the doorframe. He lay where he landed with no way to ask anyone for anything. Twice in one morning. The tank is the limit, not the will.

"Bah," he told the floor. Blue lowered her head and set her nose against his shoulder, the soft chuff again, holding off the face. Then she took herself off to the warm corner by the curing hide and dropped flat. Then, with feeling, "Buh-bah-bah." Maren had the cold cloth on the hip before the mark came up, and Bram laughed at the pair of them from the bench, once, and did not apologize for it.

"Huh." Bram set the awl down.

"Six months don't ride a dog." He crossed the boards without hurry, and the pause in him ran long, a question he had not built the planks for yet.

"You did, though." He saw it. He will not say it to her, and he will not say it to himself either. His father bent and gathered him up, hand to the head again.

"No crying after all that? Back inside."

"Da. Buh-bah-bah." Back in the crate, up among the awls and the good light. Bram's hand went to his belt, or past it, and the strap was in his fingers before Cal saw it leave anywhere. Twice now. Same hand, same ring, same nothing. It holds things. He wears a pocket that is not there and reaches into it without looking, which means he has done it ten thousand times. Every grown man in this village is probably wearing one. Find out what it costs. The same slow two-handed cross that never sped up and never slipped.

Cal flapped a hand at it.

"Bah. Da-DA?"

"Mm," Bram said, not looking up.

"You'd know." I would, actually. The shop door opened, the bell over it ringing. Company. Look harmless. Cal pulled the strap from his mouth. The hand argued, but it came free. Two hunters came through the door of Tannerson's, mud up past their knees. Hooch Mott's men, one carrying a crossbow across both hands. Bram tipped his head at the workbench, and they set it down. Hunters, maybe trappers. Different country, same animal. Stand down.

"Bah. Da-bah."

"Ha," the near one said, and grinned at him.

"Morning to you too, small lord." He turned to Bram and laid the crossbow on the bench, tipping it so the worn sling showed.

"There's a sling gone soft on us, and something worse under it." Soft sling's the least of it. But Cal kept chewing, because a baby that did anything else drew a second look. It lay an arm's length from him, the sling hung half off for the work. Bram came over wiping his hands. The two hunters leaned in over the limbs, talking past Cal. Cal stopped listening and went into the weapon. He inspected the bow like a jumper's rig. Top down. Strap, webbing frayed, dry-rot at the fold, buckle tongue worn the hole oval.

Holds in slack, lets go under load. No-go. His eye went on. String. Dry through the served middle, fibers lifting where it takes the work. One cold draw from parting. The cold came up the back of his neck. Seat. Worn proud on one side, a hair out of true. Fed every shot crooked. Three no-gos on one bow.

"Winter run," the near one said, easy about it.

"Deep country, the two of us. Gone a month." A month. That string has a week in it. He swung the arm at the bench, straight at the served middle, the same chop that had put his father's hands on the satchel.

"Bah. Bah-da."

"He likes the shiny ones." The near one slid the bow down the bench, out of reach of the baby. Then he stopped and looked at Cal properly, checking a sound he had already decided was nothing. Eyes off. Mouth open. Be furniture.

"Huh," the hunter said.

"Serious little fellow." That is how it starts. That is exactly how it starts. Bram's thumb came down the bow and stopped on the served middle. Found the strap. Found the seat. He is standing on the string and he does not know it.

"New sling, then," Bram said.

"Have it by dark." The near one tucked the crossbow under his arm, trusting it, and the bell rang them out into the cold. Two men going out. One bow. And not one word I can say about any of it.