For the ground must feed,
But the ground is blind,
So why disturb our play?
In the valley there were children still, even newcomers, to sing songs and chant rhymes. And yet despite the joy of harvest and song, the mist boiled and rolled, unstopping. Like an unhealed wound, pricked and bleeding, like an animal hurt and enraged, it growled just out of sight, muttering and dangerous. Its venom seeped into the day, fouling even the blessed rain. Fearsome it had always been, lying in wait. But the exile knew the power of the thing and yearned suddenly for the old fear, known and long endured. For the sound told its tale. The mist no longer crouched, waiting. It was rising to the hunt.
Late that afternoon, Nell found Susan alone in the room. She sat facing the window, a new stack of books beside her on the bed. Nell’s heart lifted a little. Despite the annoyances of the day, Susan was shaking off the weight that had been flattening her lately. Here she was again, with her books. Nell waited for her to go on about Mistress Bianna and the rows and rows of things to read.
But when she came around the bed, she saw that Susan sat rigid, staring blankly at the book that lay open on her lap. A tremor passed through Nell; she had the urge to raise a hand and check Susan for fever. And yet the color remained in Susan’s cheeks. Only her eyes looked strange. She gazed out the window, at the rain pounding the green corn and the ruby-studded grapevines and the rows of peach trees with their soft-skinned fruit among the leaves. The plants crouched and bowed beneath the downpour. Susan didn’t look as if she saw any of it.
“What’s wrong?” Nell asked her.
Susan glanced up, startled. “Nothing,” she said. She seemed to wake to her surroundings, and looked down at the stack of books. “The nice woman in the library gave me everything I asked for. It’s just — I wish I could get some quiet.”
“You mean from the rain?”
Susan shook her head. “Rain? No. I’m talking about that echo. Don’t you hear it? That sound from the mountain? Doesn’t it get to you?”
Nell hesitated. She strained for a minute, trying to hear something beneath the rain. Was it like the sound bats made, high and scratchy, in the dark? She tried, but there was nothing.
“What does it sound like?” she asked Susan.
Susan furrowed her brow and closed her eyes, listening. “Like — like the sound a pot makes, bubbling, or the sound of people talking in another room. Words you can almost hear the shape of. I can’t really make it out, but it’s there. It makes it hard to think.”
Nell shifted uneasily. Never in her life had she seen her sister unable to disappear into a book, and now she had stacks of them but sat frowning over a single page.
“Those books say anything about order?” she asked, trying to pull Susan from her funk. “That’s all I heard about today! If order were a fat old man, I think Mistress Meva would be married to him by now.”
Susan looked up and laughed at that. The sound was almost enough to make Nell relax. “Well, you can see why,” she said. “Order. That’s tradition, really, and it holds this place together. They’ll pretty much do anything to protect it.”
Nell stopped smiling, and Susan again grew quiet. Nell watched her look around at the light-colored walls, the unlit lamps, the rain.
“It looks like home in some ways,” Susan said quietly. “Only it isn’t.”
“No,” Nell agreed. “It isn’t. And no matter how much people look like us here, I want to get out.”
But Susan sighed. “We can’t, though, Nell. There’s nowhere to go. We have to learn what they know here, or how will we ever get back?”
“Yes, well, when are we going to do things, then? And not just hear about other people doing them?”
Susan shook her head. “I don’t know. But that’s their way. It’s the old way, and so for them, it’s the only good one.”
“Hmph.”
“It’s going to be that way here, Nell. Don’t you see? It’s because of the Genius. He wanted change, and that’s what he got.”
Nell rolled over and stood up. The window had two smaller panes, one on each side, and she pulled open one of these, then thrust her hand out to catch the rain. She wondered if this was the mist, breaking into pieces, falling cold and gray on the pretty valley. If it was, would it be gone then? Or would it seep into the roots of everything and spoil it?
She turned her face from the window. “I’m starting to hate tradition, the way they talk about it around here. If it were a fat old man, I think I’d kick him.”
Susan laughed. “You probably would,” she said. “But it wouldn’t get you anywhere.” She closed the book she’d been staring at and studied the cover of it, running her hands along the raised lettering.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Traditions are important. They’re really just stories about what used to be. And stories are what keep you knowing who you are. If they hadn’t had the stories, they couldn’t have built this place and turned the change back. You have to admit, it’s beautiful here.”
Nell shut the window. Her hand had grown cold. Outside, the water ran in rivulets down the glass, turning the valley and the hill and the trees at the edge of the ridge into green paint. She’d spent most nights since they got here telling herself stories of home to keep from forgetting. Maybe the Shepherdess and the Master Watcher and all the rest of them felt the same way. Maybe they thought that if they didn’t keep hold of the stories, they’d lose everything. But could a story be good and also bad? Could it reverse the change and make the mist at the same
