Birch slept for three days.
Mav found her in the second air hall when he got home, more than an hour after everyone else. Sela had led her in through the pool in the floor. The bear had lain down in the middle of the room and gone back to sleep. The three wolves had moved out at once. They were sharing his bed again, and they looked at him as if it were his fault.
He sat beside Birch for most of those three days. Her seaweed was rank E-, and she was rank D. The gap was smaller than Log’s had been, but the lock was still loose. So Mav kept his own will on it, as he had done for Log, and a sleeping bear didn’t pull on it much. When she finally woke up, he walked her out onto the seabed. Seven stunned lobsters for her until the lock was firm.
It was a strange thing to watch. A white bear as tall as a house was walking along the bottom of a black sea, with her fur floating around her. She was eating everything that she found.
"Lobster," Six said. He had followed them the whole way.
’Yes, Six. She eats them too.’
"My lobster."
’There are enough for both of you.’
Six didn’t answer, but his point in Mav’s head was full of doubt.
Sela watched all of this very closely.
Mav should have noticed. She had stood at the door of the air hall while the green thread closed the cut on Fern’s side. She had watched Six’s shell grow back after the duel, and Moss’s leg after the first round. She had seen a bear from another World walk into the sea and breathe.
She had been thinking about it for a long time. He only found out because, on the fourth morning, she stopped working.
-----
No stone moved in the city that day.
The builders sat in front of their houses with their webbed hands in their laps. The young ones played with the shells that they should have been carrying. And Sela sat on the ground in front of Mav’s cabin, with her arms crossed.
’What’s wrong? Is someone hurt?’
A picture arrived in his head. It showed Sela herself, standing at the gate. A thin green thread was wrapped around her neck.
Mav understood at once, and his stomach turned.
’No.’
The same picture came again, a little larger.
’No, Sela. You don’t know what you’re asking for.’
He had never refused her anything. She looked at him as if he had started speaking another language. So he sat down in front of her, and he tried to make her see it.
He sent her his own pictures. He showed her a seaweed going into the back of the eel’s skull, on the day he took Seven. He showed her Two as he had been before, a thin silver fish that wanted nothing but to eat. Then he showed her Two as he was now.
’It takes root in the brain. That’s how it works. Two is my friend, and he speaks to me. But he told me himself that the fish he used to be is gone, and only its memories are left.’ His throat was tight. ’I won’t do that to you. You aren’t a beast that I caught. You refused to let me cut the roof of a hall too low. You went on strike this morning. I won’t put something in your head that might change that.’
Sela listened to the end. Then she answered. It was the longest thing that she had ever sent him.
First, he saw the Great Arena from the inside of the dome. He saw her own small hands, raised and shaking, and the rope of water that she could hardly hold. He felt how afraid she had been. Next, he saw the two days that she had slept afterward, because lifting that water had emptied her completely.
Then the picture changed. A young Reefkin was standing in front of Log’s open jaws, with a stone in its arms. Sela was too far away. She couldn’t run fast enough, and she couldn’t lift anything heavy enough.
The last picture showed her standing at the gate again, with the green thread at her neck. Behind her, a great wave was coming toward the base.
The feeling that came with it was very clear. She wasn’t asking for herself. He had asked her to fight, and she had said yes. Now she wanted to be able to do it without breaking, and to get up afterward.
Mav didn’t know what to say. She was right, but he was still too afraid to agree.
’Give me time to think.’
She gave him three days. The builders didn’t lay a single stone in all that time, and the city was very quiet.
On the second night, he did what he always did when he couldn’t decide. He put his hand on the green coil around his chest, and he asked One.
He didn’t expect an answer, because One had never answered a question in its life. It warned him, it pulled tight, and sometimes it was hungry.
This time, the coil loosened under his hand. It was a slow, warm movement. It felt almost like someone nodding.
Mav didn’t sleep much after that.
-----
On the third morning, Sela ran out of patience.
His canteens hung on a hook inside the door of his cabin, and he had never thought of hiding them from her. She walked in while he was watching and took one down. She opened it and lifted the sprout out with both hands, very gently, as she would have lifted an egg.
’Sela, wait!’
She looked him straight in the eyes, and she laid it on the back of her own neck.
Mav threw himself forward. He reached for the lock with everything he had, to hold it shut, to stop the sprout before it could turn.
There wasn’t any lock.
He had taken 30 beasts, and every time, there had been a door, and something on the other side that pushed back. But here, he found nothing to push against. The door was already open. The little seaweed went in like a guest who had been invited.
It didn’t go to her skull. It wrapped itself twice around her neck, like a collar, and one thin root slid under the skin of her shoulder. Then it was still.
[Seaweed. Rank F-. Essence: 0/100. Host: Reefkin.]
[This host is willing. Its will remains its own.]
Mav stared at the second line.
He reached for Sela’s point in his head, and he was terrified of what he would find. It was exactly the same as before. It was stubborn and busy, and at this moment, it was very pleased with itself. It was also a little annoyed with him, because he had made her wait three days for something so simple.
Sela picked up a sharp shell and drew it across her own palm before he could stop her. A line of blood rose. A green thread crossed it, and the cut closed. She held up her hand to show him.
Mav sat down on the rock, because his legs had stopped holding him.
’You’re still you,’ he thought. He was laughing, and his eyes were stinging. ’It didn’t take anything. I didn’t know that it could be like that. I thought that it could only take.’
He put his hand on One without thinking. For three months, he had wondered what the thing in his own neck really was to him. It had never taken his mind, although it could have. He had always believed that it simply hadn’t wanted to.
’Is that what you are? A guest?’
One didn’t answer, but it didn’t pull away.
When he looked up, three other Reefkin were standing behind Sela. They were the three who had learned to lift stone after her. They had watched everything. The first one stepped forward and turned around, to show him the back of her neck.
Mav still had four free seaweeds. He looked at Sela.
She made her annoyed little sound, which meant that the answer was obvious.
By noon, four Reefkin wore a green collar. All four of them could lift water without touching it. Now all four would also heal as he did, and they would tire far more slowly. The builders had gone back to work as if nothing had happened, and Sela was giving orders again, more loudly than before.
Every school on the Row taught that builders didn’t fight.
Mav’s first elite soldier was one meter tall.