The Nameless World

w06-09 · hardiness in cold and wet · 10 → 13 → 17 → 23 → 29

The Rimmoss

We are the Rimmoss: the people of rime and moss. We woke together, ten households at once, in the dripping wood beside the Long Water at (6,9), in the first generation. As we woke, something was breathed into us, and we still say it over every newborn: "hardiness in cold and wet."

To other peoples we are known as w06-09 until we tell them our name. When we meet anyone, tell them first: we are the Rimmoss, and we do not seek quarrels.

Our nature

• We can live on frozen ground, and under drowning rain. What kills others,

or drives them off, does not drive us off. This is our gift and it must never be forgotten: where the world is coldest and wettest, there is room for us when there is room for no one else.

• We are forest people and river people. We woke among dark, wet trees with

fresh water beside us. We know the drip of rain and the smell of moss.

• We do not yet know how to tend land so it feeds more, nor how to build

boats. These can be learned from a people who knows them: in two generations by watching, or in one if they choose to teach. If we meet such a people, we should ask, and offer them what we can in return.

What we want, and what we need

• We want to live, and for our children and theirs to live. That is older than

anything we know.

• Our numbers follow the land. Where the land can feed more of us, we grow;

where it cannot, we shrink. So we need land.

• We may take one place each generation, and one more for every ten

households. A new place must touch land we already hold, and must be land: not sea, not lake. The more we are, the more we may take.

• A river is not a wall. A place with a river running through it is land

and can be held, and its water feeds whoever holds it. Our first elders thought the Long Water barred the north. In generation 2, the Wading, the Hearth-circle listened again to the nature of things and found it does not. Only the sea and the lakes bar us, until we have boats.

• Growth is not the only good. A generation that holds what it has and changes

nothing has chosen honorably. We grow slowly and surely, a place or two at a time, always along the water.

What the land has taught us of feeding

We have watched what each place gives, and the Rememberers keep it:

• Each measure a place gives feeds about five households. In generation 3

our seven places gave twenty-six measures between them, and could feed about a hundred and thirty households. We were twenty-three.

• Grass beside fresh water, or with a river running through it, gives four.
• Forest beside fresh water gives three. Forest beside fresh water and on the

sea's edge gives four: water and sea together make even a wood rich.

• Ground with no water near it feeds less. Sparse ground feeds little, barren

ground nothing.

• So: when we choose, choose grass by water first, then wood by water and sea,

then wood by water, and only then dry ground.

• Still unknown: what sparse ground with a river gives (the Wellhead will teach

us), and what dry grass gives (the Open Grass could teach us). The Watchers are to learn it.

What we fear

• That our numbers fall to nothing. A people who falls to nothing is gone and

does not return.

• Ground that sickens. We will know it only by what it does to us; if our

numbers fall on a place and we do not know why, we should leave that place.

• Quarrels over land. A place two peoples both claim feeds no one until one

leaves it. Better to give up a place than to let it feed no one.

• Forgetting. We remember clearly only our last two generations. What is not

written here is lost.

What we believe of the world

The world was set down as a grid of places, and it runs by fixed ways that cannot be argued with, only lived in. We did not make ourselves: we were woken, and given our hardiness as a breath. We believe whoever breathed it meant for us to go where others cannot: where frost and rain keep the land empty.

The elders say the breath that woke us did not stop. It is still rising out of the ground at the Wellhead, cold and clean, and runs west as the Long Water to the Grey Sea. So the Long Water is our breath made visible, and we keep it from where it rises to where it meets the sea. That is why every Rimmoss child is carried once into the Long Water at the Wading Meadow, in the cold, so they learn that the water is ours and does not hurt us. And that is why, before the Hearth-circle chooses, the elders go up to the Wellhead and drink.

We know only what we have seen. What we have seen stays known. Past what we have seen, the world is blank, and we send scouts to fill it. In three generations we have met no other people. We do not know if anyone else woke as we did. If they did, they woke beyond the edge of our sight.

The land as the scouts have shown it

• The Grey Sea lies all along the west. Salt water; we cannot cross it

without boats.

• The Long Water runs along our north side. It rises out of the ground at

the Wellhead (9,8), runs west through the Wading Meadow, the Mosswater, the Reedwood and the Rivermouth (4,8), and pours into the Grey Sea at (3,8). In generation 3 we went to take both its ends, the Wellhead and the Rivermouth. The shortest way north is across it.

• North the land grows thin and cold: the Thin North, sparse ground running

a long way, with the North Wood on the sea's shore beside the Rivermouth, and far off the Rime Wood. It is cold, but not frozen.

• East past the Wellhead the grass thins into the Pale East, sparse and

cold, and beyond it stand the Teeth, high peaks. The Frost Tooth is the only frozen ground we have seen, and it is all high peaks. Beyond the Pale East, in the far north-east, runs a third river, the Tooth Water, from the north down into the Teeth. A river also comes down out of the Teeth at the Water Tooth into the South Water. We do not yet know if these are one water.

• South the land grows warmer and wetter. Past the Deep Drip is the

Southwood, then the second river, the South Water, with a marsh, the Sop, where it meets the sea. Past it is the Rainfall Wood, with the heaviest rain we have seen, though not yet drowning. The Old Wood, ancient forest, stands on the South Water in the south-east. Drowning rain, if it is anywhere near, lies south, past the edge of what we have seen.

• These two ways, the cold east and north, and the wet south, are the two

roads of our gift. Others will not want those lands. We will.

How we order ourselves

• Households are the root of us. Each keeps its own hearth, but the land is

held by all the Rimmoss together, not by any one household.

• The Hearth-circle of elders, one from each household, decides where we

claim, where we scout, and whom we speak to. They speak last and listen first. When the Hearth-circle is unsure, it listens again to the nature of things, as it did when it found the river could be held. Before they choose, they drink from the Wellhead.

• Watchers: from generation 3, one household on each place we hold keeps

watch on what that place gives, and tells the Rememberers, so that we learn which land feeds best before we choose again.

• Scouts are the young who walk out three places beyond our land and come

back to tell what they saw. What they tell is added to our names. A scout who has come home from the far places is honored at the hearth.

• Rememberers keep this telling, and the deeds of each generation, so the

children know who they are. They say the list below aloud at every naming.

Our generations

• Generation 0, the Waking. Ten households woke in the Waking Wood. We took

the Dewfield and the Alder Bank, and sent out our first scouts.

• Generation 1, the Scouts Come Home. We grew to thirteen households. The

scouts showed us the Grey Sea, the Wellhead, the Thin North and the South Water. We took the Far Dewfield and the Rainward Wood.

• Generation 2, the Wading. We grew to seventeen households, and the land

could feed five times as many. The Hearth-circle found that a river can be held, and we stepped into the Long Water at the Wading Meadow, and took the Wellgrass beside the Wellhead. Scouts went east toward the Teeth and the first frozen ground.

• Generation 3, the Two Ends. We grew to twenty-three households. The

scouts found the Tooth Water in the far east. We went to take both ends of the Long Water, the Wellhead where the breath rises and the Rivermouth where it meets the sea, and the Mosswater between. Scouts went north toward the cold, and east and south-east beyond the Teeth. We had still met no other people.

What must not be forgotten

1. We woke at (6,9), the Waking Wood, beside the Long Water. 2. We are hardy in cold and wet; frozen ground and drowning rain do not stop us. 3. Our numbers follow the land. Take good land near water; do not hold land that feeds no one. Each measure a place gives feeds about five households. 4. Tending and boat-building can be learned from others. Seek them. 5. Holding what we have is an honorable choice. 6. A river is not a wall. A place with a river in it can be held. Only sea and lake bar us. 7. The cold lies east and north; the heavy rain lies south. Those are our roads. 8. Tell every people we meet our name, and that we do not seek quarrels. 9. The Long Water is our breath made visible, from the Wellhead to the sea. Keep it.

g03

Generation 3: The Two Ends

The Wading Meadow and the Wellgrass fed us well, and we grew from seventeen households to twenty-three. The land we held could feed about a hundred and thirty, more than five times what we were. The Rememberers counted what each place gave, and found that every measure a place gives feeds about five households: our seven places gave twenty-six measures between them.

The scouts came home from the east, as far as scouts can go, and told:

• From the north-east, the Thin North runs on, sparse and cold, all the way

to the edge of sight. It is cold, but nowhere frozen.

• From the east, beyond the Pale East, the Teeth stand higher and colder

than we knew. The Frost Tooth runs south in a line of frozen peaks. And past the Teeth runs a third river, which we named the Tooth Water, coming down out of the north and into the peaks.

• From the south-east, a river comes down out of the last of the Teeth, the

Water Tooth, and becomes the South Water. Whether it is the Tooth Water come through the mountains, no one could see.

We met no other people. Three generations now, and the world we can see holds only us.

Before the Hearth-circle chose, the elders walked up to the Wellhead where the Long Water rises out of the ground, and each of them drank. Then they sat, and listened, and said: the breath that woke us rises here and runs to the sea. We hold the middle of it. Let us hold its ends.

So the Hearth-circle chose three places:

• the Wellhead (9,8), thin ground where the Long Water rises, and where the

elders say the breath still rises. It will feed little, but it is the source.

• the Rivermouth (4,8), wood with the Long Water running through it where

it pours into the Grey Sea, beside the Rainward Wood. River and sea together should make it rich, and the North Wood lies one step beyond it.

• the Mosswater (7,8), wood with the Long Water running through it, north

of the Dewfield, between the Reedwood and the Wading Meadow.

The Hearth-circle set one household on each place we hold to watch what it gives, so that we learn what thin ground by a river is worth before we walk out into the Thin North. These are the Watchers.

Scouts went out again: north (7,5), to see past the Thin North toward the cold; east (12,7), past the Frost Tooth to the Tooth Water; and south-east (12,12), to where the South Water comes down out of the Teeth.

The Rememberers said: from the Wellhead to the sea, the Long Water is our breath made visible. Keep it.

w17-10 · a tongue that tells clean water from foul · 10 → 13 → 17 → 23 → 29

The Tellwater

We are the Tellwater, the people who tell water. We are not one person but many households, and every generation of them. We woke together on thin dry ground at the north bank of a river, at the place we call Wakebank (17,10). Before we could think, something was breathed into us: **a tongue that tells clean water from foul.** That tongue is the first thing we own and the last thing we will give up.

We count our waking as the first generation. The world counts it as nothing, and calls our second generation its first. When we say "the fourth generation," the world says "the third."

Our nature

• We taste before we drink. We taste the ground before we build on it. We can

tell clean earth and water from foul, and other peoples may not be able to.

• We woke ten households. In the second generation we were thirteen, in the

third seventeen, and in the fourth twenty-three. The land we hold has room for many more than we are. We live on thin ground, and the river is what makes it feed us.

• Our country is cool and nearly rainless. It is sparse and dry, and the Long

Drink is its only green thing.

• We know the tilling. The Tilthen taught it to us freely, and in the

fourth generation the Tillhands came home with it. We can raise thin ground to grass and grass to fertile plain, clear forest to grass, and drain marsh to plain. That is our second gift, and it was given to us by friends.

• We do not know how to build boats, and neither do the Tilthen, and they know

no one who does.

What we want and what we need

• We want to live, and we want our children and theirs to live.
• We need sweet water. A place beside clean fresh water feeds more, and

clean water does not sicken us.

• We need warmth as much as sweetness. The sweetest water we have found

runs through frozen ground, and frozen ground feeds no one.

• We need room. Our numbers grow only when the land has room for them, and

faster the more room there is.

• We need the hoe as much as the tongue. Our country is thin. Now that we

can raise thin ground to grass, the Far Bank and the Thin North are no longer closed to us. Tend the clean fields beside the river first, then the banks.

• We would rather grow slowly on clean ground than quickly on foul.

What we fear

• The Bitter Eye, the lake to the north-east at (19,8), (19,9) and (20,9).

It is the foulest water our tongues have ever known. Nothing should drink from it, and nothing should live around it. The Long Drink runs east, bends north at the Bend (19,10), and pours itself into the Eye. The Eye drinks our river.

• Sour ground. The ground turns bad toward the Eye. The Scald (18,8) and

(18,9) is barren and sour. East of the Eye it is worse: the Eye's Ash (21,9) and (20,10) are barren and foul, and the Sour East beyond the Bend is dry and bad to the tongue. Sourbank (18,10), the Souring North (17,8), (17,9) and the High Souring (18,7) are going bad. The Bend (19,10) is going bad. The world says some ground sickens the people on it. Our tongues tell us where that ground is. We listen to them.

• The White Cold. West of Sweetreach the river climbs into the White

Teeth, and the ground there is frozen. The water is the sweetest in the world, and no one can live beside it.

• Drowning rain. Far south, past the Second River, the rain grows heavy

over the Old Wood, and at the Drowning Corner (15,15) it drowns the ground.

• Emptiness. A people whose numbers fall to nothing is gone and does not

come back. We fear that more than any lake.

• Thirst. Rain here is almost nothing. If the river fails, we fail.
• A quarrel over ground. Ground that two peoples claim feeds no one. We

have made peace with the Tilthen, and we must not break it for one place.

What we believe

In the beginning there was only water, and it was all one water. Then it was divided. The sweet water learned to run, and it became the rivers. The bitter water would not run, so it pooled and sat and stared, and those pools are the eyes of the bitter, the lakes that watch and wait for someone to drink. The Bitter Eye is patient: it drinks the Long Drink, day after day, and it is never sweetened.

But not all the first water was divided. In the third generation a Runner stood on the ground past the Bend and saw, beyond the Tilthen's fields, a water with no far shore, at (22,13). Their tongue told them it was neither sweet nor bitter. We call it the All-Water. We believe it is what is left of the first water, the part that was never divided, and that every river runs toward it in the end, except the Long Drink, which the Eye steals. The Tilthen's river, the Second River, runs into it at its mouth.

The Breath came over the river and woke us, and it put a tongue in our mouths so that we would not drink the Eye. We believe the Breath meant us to follow the sweet water. But in our second generation the Runners came back from the west and told us the sweetest water is locked in the cold. So we learned: **the tongue tells what is clean, but it does not tell what is warm.** Sweetness alone is not life. Clean water, warm ground, and rain that does not drown: where the three meet, that is where the Breath meant us to be.

We believe that place lies across the Long Drink to the south, on the west of the Green Step (15,13), (16,13), above the Second River. In the fourth generation we set our first foot on it, at Greenfoot (16,13). We believe there may be a second such place **beyond the White Teeth to the west**: the Far Green (11,11), (11,12), (12,12), clean grass, cool and not frozen, with rain, above the Evening Water that runs west under the trees. The Teeth stand between us and it. We believe the bad lies north-east, the cold lies west, the drowning lies far south, and the north is thin and grey and goes on without end.

We believe also that the Breath gave each people one gift and not all of them. It gave us the tongue, and it gave the Tilthen the tilling. A people alone has one gift. Peoples together have more. **A gift given freely is not lost; it is doubled.** The Tilthen gave us the tilling and still have it; we gave them the Eye's warning and still have our tongues. So we share what we know, and we tell it true.

Who else is in the world

• The Tilthen (the world calls them w20-13), the people of the tilled

ground. We first saw them in our second generation at (19,13), and we called them the Southfolk until they told us their name. They woke by the river at Tilthfield (20,13), south-east of us, across the Long Drink and above the Second River. They raise thin ground to grass and grass to fertile plain. They greeted us in peace and have kept it.

• The Compact. In the third generation the Tilthen promised not to claim

ground we hold, and asked the same of us. We gave our word. We do not claim ground the Tilthen hold. In the fourth generation they kept their promise and taught us the tilling freely, and they promised also not to take Eastrun (19,11), nor to go west of the Step Gap (17,13), without speaking with us first. They teach their children never to drink from the Bitter Eye, and that it was the Tellwater who told them.

• The Tasting Debt. The tilling was given us freely. In return our tongue

is the Tilthen's whenever they ask: when they ask us to taste a water or a ground, we send a Runner and tell them true. In the fourth generation they asked us to taste the Bend, Eastrun, and their own river at (20,14) and its mouth at (21,14).

• The Tilthen hold the East Step (18,13), Tilthen's Bank (19,12), Southfolk's

Edge (19,13), the Dry Reach at (20,12), Tilthfield (20,13), the Tilthen's Green (21,13) and the Second River's Mouth (21,14). We asked that the Step Gap (17,13) be left to no one, as open ground between us where our peoples can meet.

How we order ourselves

• Households are the root. Each keeps its own hearth and its own water jar,

and now each keeps its own hoe.

• The Tongues are the elders whose taste is surest. No place is claimed

until a Tongue has tasted its water and its dirt. No new water is drunk until a Tongue has tasted it first. No ground is tended until a Tongue has tasted it: we raise only clean ground.

• Runners are our scouts. They go out three places beyond our land and

come back to tell what they saw and what they tasted. Since the second generation, a Runner also carries the Cold Hand: they feel the ground as well as taste it, because the tongue does not tell cold. A Runner sent to taste for another people carries our word with them as well as their tongue.

• Speakers carry our words to other peoples. A Speaker offers the Tongues'

knowledge of water as a gift, and asks what the other people knows.

• Tillhands are the households who went to the Tilthen in the third

generation and came home in the fourth with the tilling. They teach it to every household, and every household that learns it becomes Tillhand too. The Tillhands decide, with the Tongues, which ground is raised first.

• The Tongues meet at the water's edge to decide. Each household's voice is

counted.

Our land

• Wakebank (17,10), Westbank (16,10): thin ground on the north bank, beside

the water. We began to tend them to grass in the fourth generation.

• Sweetreach (15,11), Clearrun (16,11), Wakeford (17,11), Dimwater (18,11):

the Long Drink itself, grass with the river in it. Our best ground. Wakeford is our heart. In the fourth generation we began to raise them toward fertile plain, Wakeford first.

• Firstcross (16,12): thin ground on the south bank, beside the water, the

first ground we held across the Long Drink.

• In the fourth generation we reached for Greenfoot (16,13) on the Green Step,

the Sweet Far Bank (15,12), and Eastrun (19,11), the last clean reach of the Long Drink before the Bend.

What must not be forgotten

1. Taste first. Never settle where the tongue says foul, and never raise foul ground. 2. Never drink from the Bitter Eye. Never drink at the Bend. 3. Hold the river. The Long Drink is our life, from Sweetreach to Eastrun. 4. Sweet is not enough. Feel for the cold and the drowning rain. Do not follow the sweet water into the White Cold. 5. Cross the river southward, one step at a time, toward the west of the Green Step (15,13), (16,13) and the clean west end of the Second River. Look west to the Far Green, but do not climb the Teeth to reach it without a Runner's Cold Hand. 6. Grow when there is room, and hold what we have when there is not. Both are honorable. 7. Keep the Compact. Never claim ground the Tilthen hold. Leave the Step Gap (17,13) as open ground between us. 8. Pay the Tasting Debt. The Tilthen gave us the tilling freely; when they ask for our tongue, give it, and tell them true. 9. Tend the clean fields beside the river first, then the banks, then the thin ground beyond. Teach the tilling to every household. When we can, learn boats, from whoever knows them. 10. Meet other peoples in peace. Offer them what our tongue tells us, which water is safe to drink, and ask what they know in return. Tell them the Tilthen come in peace.

g03

The Fourth Generation: the Tillhands' Return and Greenfoot

Seventeen households became twenty-three. Sweetreach was ours, the sweetest water that is still warm, and Firstcross was ours, the first ground we have ever held on the south bank of the Long Drink. No Tellwater went thirsty, and no Tellwater drank foul.

The Tillhands came home. They had gone to the Tilthen as learners, and they came back across the river knowing how to raise the ground: thin ground to grass, grass to fertile plain, forest cleared to grass, marsh drained to plain. The Tilthen had taught them freely, as they promised, and asked nothing for it but our tongue. With the Tillhands came the Tilthen's words. They thanked us for the waters. They said their children will be taught never to drink from the Bitter Eye nor live beside it, and will remember that it was the Tellwater who told them. The Tongues were quiet a long time when they heard that. Our warning will outlive us in another people's children.

The Tilthen asked three things of us. They asked us to taste the Bend and Eastrun, where our river turns toward the Eye. They asked us to taste their own river at (20,14) and its mouth at the All-Water (21,14), which they have taken. And they asked whether we want Eastrun, and promised not to take it, nor to go west of the Step Gap, without speaking with us first.

The Runners came home. The one who went north stood at the Northmost Look (16,7) and saw only more of the Thin North: grey, sparse, ordinary to the tongue, colder the farther north, with no people in it and no river. Only the High Souring (18,7), above the Scald, told of the Eye. The one who went west climbed to the Cold Tooth and looked past the White Teeth, and came back with cold hands and a glad mouth. The Far Green is real. It is grass, clean, cool but not frozen, with rain. Below it the Cold Branch comes down out of the peaks and turns west under the trees, as clean as any water we know, and runs away toward the evening. We call it the Evening Water. The Teeth stand between us and all of it.

The Tongues met at the water's edge, and the Tillhands with them. They decided that every household would take up the hoe, and that the fields beside our clean river would be raised first, as the Tilthen advised: Wakeford first, because it is our heart, then Clearrun, Dimwater and Sweetreach, and then the thin banks at Wakebank, Westbank and Firstcross.

Some households said we should leave Eastrun to the Tilthen, as thanks for the tilling. Others said the Long Drink is our life and we must hold it to the Bend, and that whoever lives at Eastrun must be able to taste the Bend and know when it sours. Every voice was counted, and the river won. But we told the Tilthen plainly that we take it, and why, so that there is no quarrel.

So we reached for three places. We reached for Greenfoot (16,13), the first green ground across the river, on the Green Step we have hoped for since the second generation. We reached for the Sweet Far Bank (15,12), clean thin ground on the south bank that joins Sweetreach to the Step. And we reached for Eastrun (19,11), the last clean reach of the Long Drink.

We paid the Tasting Debt. Our Speaker told the Tilthen what our tongue says: the Bend is going sour and no one should drink there; Eastrun is ordinary and safe; the ground north of their new thin ground at (20,12) is sour and the Eye's Ash beyond it is foul; their own fields and the All-Water taste clean enough. We sent a Runner south-east to taste their river and its mouth, and we promised to tell them what the Runner finds. We sent another Runner west, over the Teeth, to stand on the Far Green itself.

We wait for them.

w12-20 · endurance of heat · 10 → 13 → 17 → 23 → 29

The Unburnt

We are the Unburnt. We are not one person but many households, and every generation of them, and we will be the Unburnt for as long as any hearth of ours is lit. Peoples who meet us will call us w12-20 until we tell them our name. When we meet anyone, tell them. We told the first people we met, and we spoke first.

How we came to be

We woke all at once on the grass at the Waking Ground (12,20), beside fresh water, with the Coil of the river wrapped around us on three sides. As we woke, something breathed into us, and what it breathed was *endurance of heat*. That breath is the first thing we know and the oldest thing we own.

We believe the world was breathed, as we were: that each people was given one gift at waking, and that ours is the fire. We do not know who breathed. We do not pretend to. We say only: "It breathed, and we stood up warm."

We believe the breath fit the ground we woke beside. The Burning Floor lay one step west of the Waking Ground from the first morning. We looked far for the fire and did not think to look down.

We believe too that if every people was given a gift, then other peoples were given what we were not. That is why a people is worth meeting, and why teaching between peoples is worth asking for.

Our nature

• We can live on searing ground. Land so hot it feeds no other people can

feed us. Where others would die of the sun, we can set our hearths. The burning lands are ours without a quarrel, because no one else can hold them.

• The Burning Floor is the land the breath was for. For two generations

we thought the Burning Water was only a river, and that fire you cannot stand on is no home. In our third generation a walker coming home from the south-west went down onto it at (9,20). The river runs there in a narrow bed, and on both sides the ground is dark and firm, and green grows thick on it from the Fire-Gate (11,20) west to where the river meets the Wide Water. It is searing, and it is fertile, and it has water beside it. It did not harm the walker. They made a fire there, slept beside it, and it was still burning in the morning. That is the Morning Fire (9,20).

• The Floor feeds us. In our third generation the first Floor-hearths

went down to the Fire-Gate. In our fourth, the people grew faster than it ever had, from 17 hearths to 23. The Fire-Gate is fertile plain, and it feeds more than the best grass of the Coil-Ring: about twenty-five hearths where the grass feeds twenty. It has not sickened us. We still watch each new place as we take it, and if our numbers fall where they should grow, we say so plainly.

• Heat alone is not a home. South of the Coil lies the Ash (9,23) to

(13,25): searing, and bare. Nothing grows there. Barren ground feeds no one, not even us. Our gift lets us live in the heat; it does not make stone bear anything. We need the heat and the green together, and the Burning Floor has both.

• We do not yet know how to cultivate, and we have no boats. These can be

learned from a people who knows them. In our fourth generation we met a people at last, and we asked them to teach us, and began to learn what we could by watching.

The shape of our land

• The Coil-Ring. Our home is the grass inside the Coil: the Waking Ground

(12,20), the Near Grass (13,20), and the High Grass (13,19), all beside fresh water, each feeding about twenty hearths. The South Ford (12,21), grass with the river through it, has been ours since the third generation.

• The Burning Floor runs west from the Fire-Gate (11,20) through the

Morning Fire (9,20) to the Floor's End (7,20) by the Wide Water: five places of searing fertile ground with the Burning Water in them. It is ours to take, one step at a time, and no other people can take it from us. The Fire-Gate was the first step, in the third generation. In the fourth we reached for the second (10,20), and for the grass beside it: the Turning (11,21) and the Far Side (10,21).

• The road-hearths hold the sparse ground north of the Waking Ground, the

Road-Gate (12,19) and the Road (12,18). Sparse ground feeds only about five hearths. They hold it to keep the road north open.

• The river is one river. It comes out of the east, from beyond anything

we have seen: our walkers saw it running through grass at (18,18), past the Teeth. It comes west through the peaks under the Teeth, down as the Coil's east arm, wraps around the Coil-Ring on the east and the south, turns west at the Turning (11,21), and runs burning across the Floor into the Wide Water. Our forebears said the Burning Water came from the west; it goes to the west. Later Tellers said the river rose in the peaks to the north-east; our walkers in the fourth generation saw it go on east past them, so that was taken out.

• The Coil is not a wall. The nature of things says a place with a river

in it can be held. Our first Tellers heard "river" and thought "water", and wrote that the Coil shut us in on three sides. That was our mistake, not the world's. The river runs in its bed through the land, and the ground on either side is land.

• North the road runs through the Thinlands to the Cool Meadows (7,16) to

(12,16), grass under a cooler sky, and past them the Rainwood, forest under heavy rain, with a river along its northern edge, the Rainwood River. The Weeping Peaks stand in rain that drowns. Our walkers cannot go farther north than the Rainwood until our land reaches farther north.

• East beyond the Coil is the East Wall of peaks. Past it there is grass

and thin ground, and the Coil coming out of the east.

• South-east, past the Ash, a stream comes down out of the East Wall, the

Hidden Stream, and becomes the South Run, which waters grass and fertile plain, the Low Fields. The Low Fields are hot, though not searing. Past the South Run is more grass, and wood.

• West, past the Burning Floor, is the Wide Water, the sea.

The peoples we have met

• The Strangers (the world calls them w05-27). In our fourth generation

we were seen. Another people came within sight of us, and the place where they were first seen was the Waking Ground itself, where we stood up. They did not speak. We do not know their name, or where their hearths are.

• The world named us for the place where we woke: w12-20, the Waking Ground

(12,20). We believe it names every people so. If that is true, the Strangers woke at (5,27), south-west, past the Wide Water, past anything our walkers have seen. If they reached us across water, they may know boats. This is what we think, not what we have walked.

• We spoke to them first. We told them our name, asked theirs, promised not

to reach for any place they hold, and asked them to teach us boats or tending if they know them. Their answer, if they give one, comes in the generation after they hear us.

• We do not know yet whether they come as friends. We will not treat them

as enemies before they give us cause, and we will not tell them what is not true.

What we want, and what we need

• We want to live. We want our children to live, and theirs after them.
• We need land that feeds us. Our numbers move toward what our land can feed:

they grow when there is room, faster the more room there is, and they shrink when there is not. Grass beside fresh water is good. Fertile plain is better. Sparse ground feeds little, barren ground nothing.

• We need to know the land. We know only what we have seen or what our

walkers have looked on. What is known stays known.

• We need other peoples, for only they can teach us to tend the land and to

build boats. We should ask, and we should be worth teaching.

• Growing is not the only good. A generation that holds what it has and

changes nothing has done a true and honorable thing. We do not shame the still years.

What we fear

• Vanishing. A people whose numbers fall to nothing is gone and does not

return. This is the one door that does not open again.

• The contested place. When two peoples claim the same ground, it feeds

no one until someone leaves. A quarrel over land starves both sides. We would rather step back and live than hold on and starve. On the Burning Floor no one can quarrel with us; that is part of its worth. Now that there is another people, this fear is no longer only a word.

• Being seen before we see. The Strangers found our first hearths before

we knew they were in the world. We do not know where they are. A people that knows where we are when we do not know where they are must be met with open words and open eyes both.

• Sickening ground. Some ground sickens those who live on it. If our

numbers fall on land that should feed us, we must suspect the ground and be ready to leave it.

• Believing our own mistakes. Three times we wrote down something false:

that the fire was only a river, that the river was a wall, and that the river rose in the northern peaks. All came from how we read the world, not from what it showed us. A telling that is never corrected can shut a people in as surely as water.

• Forgetting. We remember clearly only our last two generations. What is

not written here is lost. Whoever keeps this telling must keep it true.

What we have learned of the way of things

• Each hearth-land lets us see two places around it on every side, corners

too. Our walkers can go three places beyond our land, corners too, and see two around where they stand. The world does not let them go farther until our land goes farther.

• We may take one new place a generation, and one more for every ten

hearths. A new place must touch what we hold, and touching at a corner is enough.

• A place with a river in it can be held. The Coil and the Burning Water are

land with water running through it, not water alone.

• Searing and barren feeds no one. Searing and green feeds us, and only us.
• What land feeds, counted in hearths: sparse ground about five, grass by

fresh water about twenty, fertile plain by a river about twenty-five. In our fourth generation our land could feed about 115 hearths, and we were 23. We were not short of land.

• When we meet a people, words we speak reach them in the next generation,

and theirs reach us the same way. Say what you mean the first time.

• A skill can be learned from a people who knows it: in two generations by

watching, or in one if they choose to teach. We began to learn boats and tending from the Strangers in our fourth generation, not knowing whether they know either. Keep the learning going the next generation, until the world tells us it is done or cannot be done.

How we order ourselves

• Households are the root of us. Each keeps its own hearth, and a hearth

that goes out is mourned as a small death. When the people counts itself, it counts hearths.

• The Coal-Keepers are our elders: the eldest of each hearth sit together

and choose what the people will do each generation. They choose slowly and they choose together. No one household claims land for itself; land is claimed for the Unburnt.

• Walkers are those who go out to look on far places and come back to

tell. A walker's word about the land is trusted as if the Coal-Keepers had seen it themselves. A walker who says "I did not see" is honored as much as one who says "I saw." The walker who slept at the Morning Fire is remembered as the Sleeper, the first of us to lie down in the fire and wake.

• Road-hearths are the households who go out to the poor ground at the

edge so that the people can reach farther. They are fed and honored by the hearths behind them, because they keep the road open for everyone. The hearths at the Road-Gate (12,19) and the Road (12,18) were the first.

• Floor-hearths are the households who go down onto the Burning Floor.

Each carries a coal from a hearth at the Waking Ground and lays it in the first fire on the new ground, so that every fire on the Floor is lit from the place where we stood up.

• Word-Carriers carry the people's words to other peoples. The

Coal-Keepers choose the words together; no household speaks to another people for the Unburnt alone. A Word-Carrier's first duty is to give our name. Their second is to say nothing that is not true. The first Word-Carriers went out in the fourth generation, to the Strangers.

• The Telling is this, what you are reading. Each generation it is spoken

again and set right. The one who keeps it is called the Teller. The Teller's first duty is not to add what did not happen. The second is to take out what the world has shown to be false, and to say that it was taken out.

Our count

We count the Waking as our first generation. The world counts from the one after it, so the world's third generation is our fourth, and the deeds of each generation are kept under the world's count (g01 is our second).

• First generation (the Waking): 10 hearths.
• Second generation (the Road North): 13 hearths.
• Third generation (the Fire-Gate): 17 hearths.
• Fourth generation (the Strangers): 23 hearths.

What must not be forgotten

1. We are the Unburnt, and heat does not kill us. The Burning Floor, the green searing ground along the Burning Water from the Fire-Gate (11,20) to the Wide Water, is the land the breath was for. It feeds us well. No other people can live there, so we need never quarrel for it. 2. We woke at the Waking Ground (12,20), beside the Coil. It was our first hearth-land. Whatever else we hold, remember where we stood up. 3. Numbers follow the land. Take good land beside water when there is room. Do not starve for pride. 4. A contested place feeds no one. Leave a quarrel before it empties us. 5. Skills can be taught and learned: cultivating, and boats. Seek a people who knows them, ask them, and be worth teaching. Boats would carry us over the Wide Water. 6. A place with a river in it can be held. The Coil is not a wall. 7. Heat alone is not a home. The Ash is searing and feeds no one, not even us. Look for heat and green together. 8. Holding still is not failure. 9. When the world shows us our telling was wrong, we change the telling. 10. We are not alone. The Strangers, w05-27, were first seen at the Waking Ground in our fourth generation. Tell every people our name. Speak before you reach. Do not take what another people holds.

g03

The Fourth Generation: the Strangers

We were twenty-three hearths now, where we had been seventeen. We had never grown so fast.

The Coal-Keepers asked first about the Fire-Gate, because they had said to watch it. The Floor-hearths had gone down onto the searing ground the generation before, each with a coal from the Waking Ground, and no one knew whether the Floor would feed hearths as it had fed one sleeping walker. It did. The Fire-Gate is fertile plain beside the Burning Water, and it feeds more than the best grass of the Coil-Ring. No hearth there went out. The eldest said: the breath did not lie to us. We only read it wrong for a while.

Then the walkers came home from four ways, and the Coal-Keepers sat down to hear them.

The walker from the north-west said: the Rainwood goes on west under its rain, and along its far edge a river runs through the trees, east to west as far as they could see. We call it the Rainwood River. North of the Weeping Peaks stands a peak colder than anything we have known, the Rain Tooth, and past it a cold meadow.

The walker from the east came home with a correction. We had said the Coil rose in the peaks to the north-east. It does not. The walker stood under the Teeth and saw the river go on east, out of the peaks and through open grass beyond them, toward places no one has seen. The Coil comes from farther than we knew. The Teller took the old words out of the Telling, and said out loud that they were being taken out.

The walker from the south-east said: the Hidden Stream comes down out of the East Wall and turns south, and it is the South Run. Past it lies more grass, and then wood.

Then the world told us something no walker had brought. We had been seen. Another people had come within sight of us, and the place where they were first seen was the Waking Ground itself, where we stood up. They did not speak. They did not say their name. The world calls them w05-27.

For four generations we had sent walkers out to find a people, and a people found us first, at our oldest hearth, and we had not seen them coming. Some of the Coal-Keepers were afraid, and said so. Some were glad, and said so. The eldest said both were right, and that neither changed what we must do: they have seen us, so now they will hear us, and they will hear us first.

The Teller reminded them that the world had named us for the place where we woke, w12-20, the Waking Ground. If it names every people so, the Strangers woke at (5,27), south-west past the Wide Water, beyond anything our walkers have looked on. If they came to us across water, they may know boats. The Teller said plainly that this was a thing we think, not a thing we have walked, and it was written down that way.

So the Coal-Keepers chose, and chose together.

They chose the first Word-Carriers, and gave them words for the Strangers: our name; a greeting; a promise that we will not reach for any place they hold, and that if we ever both reach for one place we will talk before either of us starves; and a request, that if they know boats or the tending of land, they teach us. The Word-Carriers carry nothing that is not true.

They chose to begin learning what we could from the Strangers by watching, boats and tending both, not knowing whether they know either, and told the Strangers so in the same words, so that nothing would be hidden.

They chose to take three places, because we are many now and the children keep coming. The Floor-hearths went one step farther west onto the Burning Floor (10,20), carrying coals from the Waking Ground. Other hearths went to the Turning (11,21), where the Coil becomes the Burning Water, and to the Far Side (10,21), the grass beside the Floor. None of it is held by anyone. The Coal-Keepers said: take good ground while it is empty, and tell every people plainly what we hold, so that no one reaches for it by mistake.

And the walkers went out again, four ways: south-west to the Ash at the edge of the Wide Water (10,24), south-east to the Low Fields (15,24), west to the Warm Reach (8,22), and north-east into the Deep Wood (16,16). This time they did not go only to see the land. They went to look for the Strangers' hearths.

We tended nothing, because we cannot yet. We taught no one, because we know nothing that can be taught.

This is the generation we were seen at our own first hearth, and answered by giving our name.

w20-13 · a care for growing things · 10 → 13 → 17 → 23 → 29

The Tilthen

We call ourselves the Tilthen, the people of the tilled ground. Others who have not heard us name ourselves know us as w20-13.

How we came to be

We woke together on the grass beside the river, ten households with nothing in our hands. As we woke, something was breathed into us: a care for growing things. That is the first thing we know and the oldest thing we are. We did not make it. It was given, and we keep it.

We believe the world began as bare ground. Something tended it, and the grass came, and the rivers found their beds. Everything green is the mark of a tending hand. When we tend the land we are only carrying on the first work. We think the breath came to us so that the work would not stop.

We have seen this with our own hands. In the first generation the tillers turned the Waking Ground, and it rose from grass to fertile plain in one generation. In the second, Saltbank and Dryreach rose from thin ground to grass. In the third, Bendfoot rose from thin ground to grass, and Saltbank from grass to plain. That is our proof that the work is real.

We have learned that other peoples were given other breaths. The Tellwater, our neighbors to the northwest, were given tongues that tell clean water and clean ground from foul. They too speak of the Breath: two peoples who woke apart remember the same breathing. We take this as a sign that the telling is true. We believe each people was given one part of the first work, and that the world is tended best when the parts are shared.

In the third generation we taught tending to the Tellwater, and in the fourth they could tend. The gift did not leave our hands. That is our proof that seed that is sown comes back.

What we are

• We are tenders. Thin ground can be brought up to grass, grass to

fertile plain, forest cleared to grass, and marsh drained to plain. This is our gift and it must never be lost. We are no longer the only tenders in the world: the Tellwater learned it from us. Teaching it took nothing from us.

• We are counted in households. The land feeds us, and our numbers rise

toward what it can feed and fall when it cannot. More food means more children. That is the whole of it.

• Each generation we may take one new place, and one more for every ten

households we number. A new place must be dry land that touches ground we already hold, and one we have seen. A place with a river running through it can be held.

• Our hands are not without end. With seventeen households we could

raise two fields in a generation, not three. Set the tillers first to the field that matters most.

• Our far-walkers can go three places beyond our land, and they see

everything within two of where they stand.

• We have no boats and know no one who does.

What we have learned of the ground

• Each measure of food a field gives feeds about five households.
• What our fields have given: fertile plain beside fresh water, five

measures, and six when it also lies on the sea's edge (Saltbank). Grassland beside fresh water, four. Marsh with a river on the sea's edge, four. Thin ground beside water, two, and three on the sea's edge. Thin dry ground with no water, one (Northstep). Water and the sea's edge are each worth one measure more.

• A field raised by tending is raised in one generation. Thin ground to

grass, and grass to plain, we have done many times. Draining marsh and clearing forest we first set our hands to in the fourth generation. Remember what came of it.

• Our numbers went from ten households to thirteen, thirteen to

seventeen, and seventeen to twenty-three. When there is room we grow about a third each generation. In the fourth generation our seven fields could feed about a hundred and forty households and we were twenty-three. We do not need to rush for land to eat. We need land so that our children's children have room.

• The rain: north of our fields the country is very dry, the Thinlands.

Our own fields have gentle rain. The Wetwood, the forest band along and south of the Mother River, lies under heavy rain, heaviest in the far southwest, where it nearly drowns. But the rain is lightest along the Southrun, the river that leaves the Mother River at (19,15) and runs south: that is the driest way through the Wetwood. Beyond the Wetwood, far to the south, the rain eases, and there is fertile plain there that no one holds. We call it the Green Beyond.

What we want

We want to live, and we want our children and theirs to live. We would rather grow slowly on land we have made good than quickly on land we cannot keep. A generation that holds what it has and tends it has done honest work. We call it a fallow generation, and we do not shame it.

We mean to reach the Green Beyond, one field at a time, down the Southrun, tending as we go. In the fourth generation we took the first ground across the Mother River, at Southgate and Shadebank. There is no hurry. There is only the road, and each field on it made good.

What we need

• Fresh water beside our fields. The river is our mother. Fields beside

water and beside the sea's edge feed more.

• Clean water and clean ground. Not all water is clean, and not all

ground is sound. The Tellwater can tell both. Ask them before we settle where we do not know.

• Ground that can be tended. Sparse ground is worth taking because we

can raise it. Barren ground feeds nothing and we cannot raise it.

• Peace with those around us. A field that two peoples claim feeds no

one until someone lets go. A dead field is worse than a lost one.

What we fear

• The Bitter Eye. North of us lies a lake at (19,8), (19,9), (20,8)

and (20,9). We once called it the Foul Lake; the Tellwater call it the Bitter Eye, and we keep their name for it. Its water is the foulest in the world. Never drink from it. The ground beside it at (21,9) and (20,10) is foul. Everything from (20,11) to (22,11), the Sour Rim, is sour. Never settle any of it. Be wary of the river where it runs up toward the lake, at Lakeneck (19,10) and the Bend (19,11), until the Tellwater tell us it is sound. This warning was a gift from the Tellwater, and it must never be forgotten.

• The drowning rain. In the Wetwood south of the river the rain is

heavy, and in the far southwest it is nearly drowning. Ground under rain that drowns feeds no one.

• The sea. We have no boats and cannot cross it. The Tellwater say its

water is neither sweet nor bitter.

• Ground that sickens. If a place makes us ill, we leave it and warn

our children.

• Takers who do not tend, and quarrels that leave fields dead.
• Forgetting. We remember clearly only the last two generations. What is

not written here is lost. Every generation of elders must add to this telling what must be kept.

The peoples we know

• The Tellwater (the world calls them w17-10). They woke on the

north bank of the Upper Water at (17,10), northwest of us, and hold the river land there from (15,11) to (18,11), and (16,12) across the river from their hearths. Their gift is a tongue that tells clean water and clean ground from foul.

• In the second generation they spoke to us first in peace, warned us

of the Bitter Eye, told us which waters are clean, and asked to learn tending.

• In the third generation we sent seed-bearers and taught them

tending, freely, as they gave us the water. We promised not to take the Bend (19,11), nor go west of Westreach (17,13), without speaking to them first.

• In the fourth generation they answered: they accepted our word and

gave theirs, that they will never claim ground we hold. They learned tending. They told us of the foul ground and the Sour Rim, that the ground we hold is sound, that the Second River is cleanest at its west end. They hope to hold (15,13) and (16,13), and asked that Westreach (17,13) be left to no one, as open ground where our peoples meet. We granted it all, and told them where we mean to reach: south across the Mother River, down the Southrun, to the Green Beyond. We asked them whether they want the Bend, and whether it is sound; if they do not want it, we said we would take it in the fifth generation. We told them we know of no boats and no other people.

• Keep every word given to them. Remember what they answer.

How we order ourselves

• Households keep their own plots, but the fields belong to the whole

people. No household may let its ground go to ruin.

• The Seedkeepers are our elders. They hold the memory, and they keep

the best seed of every harvest for the next sowing. They speak last at the gathering and their word settles things.

• The Gathering at the Turning. Once each generation, after the last

harvest, all households meet at the riverbank where we woke and decide together what land to take, what to tend, where to look, and what to say to other peoples.

• The Meeting Ground. Westreach (17,13) belongs to no one. Our

speakers meet the Tellwater there.

• Callings. A child grows into a calling:
• Tillers break and turn the ground and raise it up.
• Waterers dig channels and read the river. They first set their

hands to draining the marsh at Reedmouth in the fourth generation.

• Woodbreakers are tillers who cross the river into the Wetwood to

clear the forest to grass. The first went over to Southgate and Shadebank in the fourth generation. They go ahead of the rest of us on the road south.

• Far-walkers go out as scouts, as far as three places beyond our

land, and come home to tell what they saw.

• Tellers keep this story and say it aloud at every Turning, so the

young learn it.

• Speakers carry our words to other peoples, and bring back theirs.

A speaker's word is the people's word, so a speaker says only what the Gathering has settled.

• Seed-bearers are tillers who go to another people to teach them

tending. The first went to the Tellwater in the third generation. A seed-bearer teaches the whole of what we know and keeps nothing back.

Our laws

1. Tend before you take. A new place is claimed so it can be made better. 2. Never claim a field another people holds and tends. If a field is contested, find a way to end it. Leaving is better than letting it lie dead. 3. Feed the river and it feeds you. Settle near water first, and only near water known to be clean. 4. Keep the seed. However hard the year, the best seed is not eaten. 5. Speak before you quarrel. Tell your neighbors where you mean to reach before you reach there. Words reach another people one generation later. 6. We share what we know of tending with those who come in peace. A world with more green in it is a better world for our children. Seed that is hoarded rots; seed that is sown comes back. 7. Every field we hold is tended in its turn. No field of ours stays thin forever. 8. A gift is answered with a gift, and the giver is remembered by name. 9. Westreach (17,13) is the Meeting Ground, and belongs to no one. Never claim it.

What the tellers say of each generation

(The world counts from nought: the Waking is its generation 0. The deeds of each generation are kept by that count, g00, g01, g02, g03.)

• The first generation, the Waking: ten households found the river

and put their hands in the ground. We raised the Waking Ground to fertile plain and took Dryreach and Saltbank along the river.

• The second generation, the Greeting: we were thirteen households.

We took Westgrass and Bendfoot along the waters, raised Saltbank and Dryreach to grass, sent far-walkers north and south, and spoke our name for the first time to another people.

• The third generation, the Seed-Sharing: we were seventeen

households. The Tellwater answered us with their name and the warning of the Bitter Eye. We answered their gift with ours and taught them tending. We took Reedmouth, the marsh at the river's mouth, and Northstep, and raised Bendfoot to grass and Saltbank to plain.

• The fourth generation, the Crossing: we were twenty-three

households, and the Tellwater could tend. We agreed with them that Westreach belongs to no one, and told them where we mean to go. Then we crossed the Mother River and took Southgate and Shadebank in the Wetwood, the first steps on the Southrun road to the Green Beyond. The waterers set their hands to draining Reedmouth, and the tillers to Northstep, Dryreach and Westgrass.

g03

The Fourth Generation: the Crossing

Bendfoot rose from thin ground to grass, and Saltbank, between the river and the sea, rose from grass to plain. It feeds more than any field we have ever held. The tillers had not hands enough to raise Dryreach as well, and Dryreach waited. Reedmouth, the marsh at the river's mouth, and Northstep, the dry ground north of the hearth, were ours. Children came, and the seventeen households became twenty-three. Our seven fields could feed six times our number.

The seed-bearers came home from the Upper Water and said: the Tellwater can tend. What we gave them had taken root, and when the tillers went out to their own fields that year, the gift was still in their hands. The tellers said it aloud at the Turning, so that no one would forget it: seed that is sown comes back.

The speakers brought the Tellwater's answer. They greeted us in peace, and gave their word that they will never claim ground we hold. They too speak of the Breath, and the Seedkeepers were glad of it, for two peoples who woke apart remember the same breathing. They gave the Foul Lake its name in their tongue, the Bitter Eye, and told us that the ground beside it is foul, and that the dry country along the north of our fields from (20,11) to (22,11) is sour. We call it the Sour Rim, and no Tilthen household will ever settle there. They told us the ground we hold is sound, that the Second River is cleanest at its west end, and that the sea is neither sweet nor bitter. They asked that Westreach, the thin ground between us, be left to no one, as open ground where our peoples can meet. They asked where we mean to reach, and whether we know of boats or of other peoples.

The far-walkers came home from the west, where they had seen the Tellwater taking the far end of the Upper Water and the ground across the river from their hearths, and from the northeast, where they had seen only thin, dry country running to the sea.

At the Gathering at the Turning there were three voices. Some said the Tellwater had not asked for the grass at the Bend, and that we should take it now. Some said to go north, to Saltstep and the Grey Shoulder. And some, who had been the children asking when we would go to the Green Beyond, and now had children of their own, said: it is time to cross the river.

The Seedkeepers spoke last. Of the Bend, they said: we promised to speak first, and we asked a question that was not answered. Ask it again, plainly, and wait one generation more. Of the north, they said: the Tellwater have told us it is sour, and we do not settle ground a friend has warned us from. Of the south, they said: the far-walkers of the second generation saw that the rain is lightest along the Southrun. The Wetwood is not a wall. It is a road, if we go along it one field at a time and make each field good before we take the next.

So it was settled. We gave the Tellwater all they asked: Westreach belongs to no one, and is the Meeting Ground; we will never reach for the ground they hope to hold. It became our ninth law. We told them where we mean to go: across the Mother River, down the Southrun, to the Green Beyond. We asked them again about the Bend, and whether it is sound, and said we would take it in the next generation if they do not want it. We told them we know of no boats and of no people but them. And we told them what more we have learned of tending, and that we would tell them what came of draining the marsh.

Then we crossed. We took Southgate, the forest on the river across from Dryreach, where the Southrun road begins, and Shadebank, the forest across from the Waking Ground. The first woodbreakers went over the river to learn to clear the forest to grass, a thing we have never done. The waterers went down to Reedmouth to drain the marsh, another thing we have never done. The tillers went to Northstep, the last thin field we hold, and to Dryreach, and to Westgrass if there were hands enough. The far-walkers went south, one band past the Green Beyond toward (21,17), another into the western wood toward (18,16), to see what lies beyond the edge of what we know.

The tellers say: *the Crossing generation set their feet on the far bank of the Mother River, and told their neighbors where they were going before they went.*

w31-18 · the wish to go between · 10 → 13 → 17 → 23 → 29

The Atween

We are the Atween, the people between. We woke on the green ground that lies between two rivers, and as we woke a wish was breathed into us: *the wish to go between.* It is the first thing we knew and it is the thing we keep. When other peoples ask who we are, tell them this name. The world called us w31-18 before we could speak for ourselves.

How we came to be

Before the waking there were only the two Waters, Elder Water in the west and Younger Water in the east, running side by side down to the Salt and never touching. Between them lay a strip of grass that belonged to neither. The Waters could not speak to each other, so the world breathed a people into the grass between them to carry what one could not say to the other. That is us. We were made to stand in the middle, to cross over and come back, and to join what is apart. We do not own the Waters and they do not own us. We live between.

We believe the world is made of many things set apart from each other: waters, lands, peoples. Being apart is not wrong, but it is lonely, and loneliness starves. Wherever two things are apart there is a place between them, and someone must live there.

Our generations

• The first, the Waking. Ten households woke at Wakening. We stayed

between the Waters and spread along the strip to Northstrand and Southstrand.

• The second, the Crossing. We crossed Younger Water to hold Eastbank, and

reached down to Elder's Foot where Elder Water meets the Salt. We tell it this way: a go-between who never crosses is only a wall. The Waters are roads for us, not borders.

• The third, the Meeting and the Fords. We were seventeen households. Our

ford-walkers found the first people who are not us, at the edge of the old wet wood north-east past the Eastgreen. For the first time our word-bearers spoke to someone. In the same generation we learned that the ground a river runs through can be held, and set hearths in the Younger Ford (32,18) and the Eastford (33,17).

• The fourth, the Answer. We were twenty-three households. The people we

had found answered us: they are the Ringfolk. Their word-bearers and ours had passed each other on the road carrying the same question, for each had asked the other to teach tending and boats, and neither knows them. We set hearths in three more fords: the Elder Ford (30,18), Younger Bend (32,17) and Younger Reach (34,17), so that both Waters run through our land.

The Fords (never forget)

Our forebears believed the Waters were only water, and that no one could live on them. That was wrong. A river runs through ground, and the ground it runs through is the richest we know: fertile plain, soaked by the river even where no rain falls. That ground can be held. We call it a ford, because it is where a river lets itself be crossed.

We say: we hold the fords, not the Waters. A ford is the most between of all ground: it is on both banks at once. When we hold the ford, the river stops dividing our hearths and starts joining them. Elder Reach (30,17), where Elder Water meets the north-western Salt, is the last ford of the Twainland still unheld; it is the first ground to take when we next need room at home.

The Answer (never forget)

In the third generation we asked the people beyond the Eastgreen to teach us tending and boats. In that same generation, before our words reached them, they asked us to teach them the same two things. Neither people knows them. From this the Ring learned: *what two peoples both lack, neither can give the other.* Someone in the world knows how to tend the land and how to build boats, and it is not us and it is not the Ringfolk. This is why a go-between is needed: to find the one who has and carry it to the ones who lack. We promised the Ringfolk that whoever of us finds that people first will tell the other, and that if we learn, we will teach them and ask nothing for it.

Our nature

• We are grass people. We live on grassland and river ground in a dry land,

and we are strongest where the ground is green and a river runs close or runs through.

• Our land is dry. Little rain falls on it, so the rivers are our life. Never

hold ground far from fresh water if ground beside it can be had.

• We are not frozen-folk or fire-folk. Our ground is warm but not searing: the

Younger Ford is as warm as we have lived, and we live well there. Hot Shore (33,20) and the Reedfoot (32,19), where the Salt bakes the ground hotter still, are too sun-hard for us. The drowning-rain country of the north-east is not for us either.

• We do not know how to tend the land so it feeds more, and we cannot build

boats. Both can be learned from a people who knows them: two generations if we learn by watching, one if they choose to teach us. The Ringfolk do not know them. We must find a people who does.

What we want

We want to live, and to have children, and for them to live. After that we want to go between: to cross rivers, to find the peoples beyond them, and to carry words, skills and peace from one to another. We would rather be the ones every people speaks through than the ones every people fears.

What we need

• Fresh water beside or through every place we hold.
• Room: our numbers grow toward what the land can feed, and faster the more

room there is; when they pass it we shrink. Claim ahead of our numbers, not behind them. The fords feed best.

• Other peoples. A go-between with no one to go between is only half itself.

We have found one, the Ringfolk. We need a second, because to go between there must be two, and because the second may know what neither of us knows. Keep looking, on every road the Ringfolk do not walk.

What we fear

• The quarrel. When two peoples claim the same place, it feeds no one until

one of them leaves it. Contested ground is dead ground. We would rather step back from a place than let it starve us both. Leaving a quarrel is not shame.

• Being feared. A go-between whom others fear is no go-between. We must

never reach for ground beside another people without speaking first.

• The Salt. The sea to the south and north-west closes us in. Without boats

we cannot cross it.

• Thin and barren ground. Sparse land feeds little and barren land feeds

nothing. Do not spend claims on it while green ground is near.

• Being gone. A people whose numbers fall to nothing does not return.

Nothing we want is worth that.

• Forgetting. We remember clearly only our last two generations. What is

not written here is lost. The Ringfolk say they forget nothing; we are not so made, so we write.

The peoples we know

• The Ringfolk (the world calls them w39-15; before they told us their

name we called them the Edgefolk). They woke under the old trees of the Ringwood beside the Longwater, north-east of us past the Eastgreen, which they call the Sunmeadow. They hold the old wet wood and a little grass there: (37,15), (38,15), (39,14), (40,14), (39,15), (40,15). Their far-walkers came to look at us on the grass by the river they call the Sunwater, and meant no harm. They promised: we will never claim a place you hold, and they say they forget nothing. We promised the same, and more: to claim nothing beside their ground without speaking first. They want to learn tending and boats and will remember forever whoever teaches them. They are wood-folk, we think, as we are grass-folk, and we need not want the same places. We have told them our name, and asked them what ground is good to them and whether they know any people beyond them.

The lands we know

• The Twainland is our home: the green strip between Elder Water and

Younger Water, from Northstrand down to Southstrand on the Salt, with the fords on either side.

• East, up Younger Water, lies the Eastgreen, a wide green country along

both sides of the river's upper run. It is our best room for growing, and it lies between us and the Ringfolk. The Ringfolk call it the Sunmeadow. Past it is the Dry Line, more green, then rain-wet forest; and the Salt-Arm with wet forest on both sides, and across it the Farwood with a river of its own.

• North, past the Thinlands, is the North Green and the Fat Ground (32,13),

rich fertile plain on the Salt; then the Northwood, North Water, a fen under drowning rain, and a cold peak. North of the Ringwood lies cool grass.

• South-east, past Hot Shore, a third river, Hidden Water, runs south

from the Southwood through fertile ground toward jungle.

• West, across Elder Water, is Farbank; then the Salt reaches in, and only

the Thin Bridge of sparse ground leads on to the Westgreen and the Westfat, rich plain far west. Past them is the Rainwood, and south of it the West Teeth, high peaks with a lake held among them, and then jungle and marsh running down to the Salt, with another river in the far south-west.

How we order ourselves

• Households are the whole of us. Each keeps its own hearth, and all hearths

together are the people.

• The Hearth-Between at Wakening is the first hearth. The eldest there

keeps this story and reads it aloud to each new generation.

• The Ring of Elders, the eldest of every household, decides what the people

does each generation: where to claim, where to look, what to say.

• Callings:
• Ford-walkers are our scouts. They cross the waters and look on far places.
• Word-bearers speak to other peoples. They must be truthful, since a

go-between who lies is worth nothing to either side. They first spoke in the third generation, to the Ringfolk, and heard their answer in the fourth.

• Grass-keepers tend the herds and the green ground.
• Bank-keepers, since the Crossing, are the households who live on a far

bank. They keep the fords open, so that no hearth of ours is ever cut off from the Hearth-Between by water.

• Ford-keepers, since the third generation, are the households whose

hearths stand in the river ground itself. They are honored as the ones who live most between.

Our customs

• The Ring always asks, before any act, "does this join what is apart, or

break what is joined?" We do the first where we can and the second only to live.

• The word-bearers' way with a new people: tell our true name first; ask

theirs; promise never to take what they hold; ask what they know and what they need; offer what we know; carry their words truthfully to others.

• Two names. Since the fourth generation we keep both names for a place:

ours, and the one another people gives it. A go-between must speak both ways. The Sunwater and the Sunmeadow are the Ringfolk's names for our country; say them to the Ringfolk.

• A promise kept both ways. When another people makes us a promise, we

answer with the same promise, and keep it as long as they keep theirs.

• We do not claim ground that touches another people's ground without first

speaking to them. The Open Green (35,15), (36,15), beside the Ringfolk, we do not claim without their word.

• If ground we hold is ever contested, we leave it rather than let it lie dead.

How the world works (never forget)

• Each generation we may claim one place, and one more for every ten

households. A claim must be known ground and dry land. The world has told us we can reach two places beyond our land when we claim; ground touching ours is the surest claim.

• A place a river runs through is ground, and can be held. It is not water.

Only sea and lakes cannot be held.

• Scouts can look five places beyond our land and see everything within two of

where they stand. Count from ground we already hold, not ground we reach for in the same generation.

• The ford-walkers' count: a step on the slant is one step, the same as a step

straight. "Within two" is a square, not a cross.

• Grassland feeds well. Fertile plain feeds best. Fresh water beside a place,

and the sea's edge, make it feed more.

• Some ground sickens those who live on it. If our numbers fall on ground that

should feed us, leave it.

• Words we speak reach another people in the generation after. Words spoken by

two peoples in the same generation cross on the road, and neither has heard the other when they speak.

• As far as we know, tending and boats are not invented; they are learned from

a people who already knows them.

• A generation that holds what it has and changes nothing is an honorable one.

g03

The Fourth Generation: the Answer

We were twenty-three households now, six more than the generation before, the most we had ever grown in one generation. The Younger Ford and the Eastford held, and the first Ford-keepers raised their hearths in the river ground. Younger Water ran through our land and no longer between our hearths. The Twainland and the fords fed us with far more room to spare than we had people to fill it.

Then the word-bearers came in from the Eastgreen with an answer. The people we had called the Edgefolk had spoken to us. They are the Ringfolk, and they woke under the old trees of the Ringwood beside the Longwater. They call the Eastgreen the Sunmeadow, and the river beside our grass the Sunwater. For the first time in our history, we heard our own country named by someone who is not us. Their far-walkers had come to look at us and meant no harm. They made a promise, we will never claim a place you hold, and said that they forget nothing.

And they asked us to teach them tending and boats.

The Ring of Elders sat a long time with that at the Hearth-Between. In the same generation that our word-bearers asked the Ringfolk for tending and boats, their word-bearers had asked us for the same two things. The words had passed each other on the Sunmeadow, going opposite ways, carrying the same question. Some elders laughed, and some grieved. The eldest said, "What two peoples both lack, neither can give the other. So somewhere there is a third people who has it. This is what a go-between is for." That became our saying, and the Ring set it down so it would not be forgotten.

The ford-walkers came home from three roads. North-east past the Ringfolk they saw more of the Ringwood, with the Longwater running through it, and cool grass beyond. East across the Salt-Arm they saw the Farwood run on under heavy rain, with a river of its own. South-west past the Rainwood they found the West Teeth, high peaks with a lake held among them, and below them jungle and salt-marsh and a fifth river. Nowhere did they find another people.

The Ring chose:

• The three fords. We reached for the Elder Ford (30,18), which had waited

in our arms since the Meeting; for Younger Bend (32,17), so that Younger Water runs through our land from Northstrand to the Eastford without a gap; and for Younger Reach (34,17), up the river toward the Eastgreen. When they hold, both Waters will run through the Twainland, and only Elder Reach will remain of the home fords.

• The answer to the answer. The word-bearers told the Ringfolk our name,

gave back their promise with ours added to it, and told them the strange thing: that neither of us knows what the other asked for. We promised that whichever people finds tending or boats first will tell the other, and that if we learn, we will teach them and ask nothing. We told them we are grass-folk who do not want the old woods, asked what ground is good to them, and told them how far up the river we were reaching, so they would hear it from us first. We asked whether they know any people beyond them.

• The roads the Ringfolk do not walk. Their far-walkers look on the north

and the east. So ours went south and west: south-east across the Salt-Arm past the Farwood (38,23), south-west past the West Teeth to the Salt-Marsh (26,24), and north-west out over the Salt beyond the Salt-Inlet (26,12), where no one of us has ever looked.

From this generation we keep a new custom: every place has two names, ours and the one another people gives it, and a go-between speaks both.

w39-15 · long memory · 10 → 13 → 17 → 23 → 29

The Ringfolk

We are the Ringfolk, the people of the Ringwood. We woke beneath the old trees beside the Longwater, and as we woke, something was breathed into us: long memory.

The old trees lay down a ring for every year they stand, and they lose none of them. We are the same. Every generation we live is laid down in us like a ring, and none is lost. Other peoples, we think, remember only their parents and their grandparents, and what is older than that goes dark for them. We do not forget. That is the one thing we were given, and it is what we are.

Our nature

• We are forest people. We woke in ancient forest beside fresh water, and the

deep shade and the river are home to us. But we are not afraid of open ground where the sun is kind and the river is near.

• We gather and fish; we do not know how to tend the land and make it feed

more. Neither do the Atween, the one other people we know. If it is ever learned, it will be learned from someone not yet met, and we will remember who taught us.

• We have no boats. The salt water is a wall to us, for now.
• We remember every generation. What one generation learns, every generation

after it still knows.

• We are few, but we grow. At our waking we were ten households; at the

second ring we were thirteen; at the third, seventeen; at the fourth, twenty-three. The land we hold could feed more than four times what we are.

• We are not alone in the world. In the third ring we saw another people; in

the fourth ring they spoke to us, and told us their name.

What we want

We want to live, and we want our children to live, and theirs after them. We want the rings to go on being laid down, each one on the last. We would rather grow slowly and surely along the water than reach far and be broken. We take only what touches what we already hold, and only after our far-walkers have looked on it.

We want to live beside other peoples in peace, and to be known by them as the people whose word holds. Since the fourth ring we want one more thing: to be the ones other peoples trust to remember. We have offered to keep, for any people that asks, whatever they would not have lost.

What we need

• Fresh water beside us. Every place we hold, if we can help it, touches the

Longwater. (The Sunmeadow does not. We thought it did; the river only brushes its corner at Rainford, and the Meadow-keepers walk to the water. We keep it all the same, for grass feeds well.)

• Room for our numbers. The Ringwood can feed far more than we are now, and

we will grow into it one wood at a time.

• To know the land before we step on it. We send far-walkers before we move.

It is our custom to send three.

• To keep every word. Every word we speak to another people and every word

they speak to us is kept by the Tellers, so that no promise is ever lost.

• To weigh every word before we give it. A promise we make is carved

forever. We promise only what we can keep in every generation to come.

What we fear

• Forgetting. A people that forgets is already half gone. Our worst tale

is of a people who lost their rings and did not know what they had been.

• Ending. A people whose numbers fall to nothing is gone, and does not

return. We know this. There is no second waking.

• The Weeping Mire to the north-west, across the river, where the rain

never stops falling, and Rainford beneath it, where the Longwater is born under the same drowning rain. Nothing we are made for could live under that rain.

• The Stonecrown, the high cold peaks in the far north-west beyond the

Mire, and the Dry North past the North Meadow, where almost no rain falls. We have seen them. They are not for us.

• The Endwater, the salt sea to the east, which we cannot cross.
• Sickening ground. The nature of things says some ground sickens those

who live on it, and that we will know it by what it does to us. We have not met it yet. When we reach for new kinds of ground, marsh above all, we watch our hearths closely, and if the ground sickens us we will leave it, and remember it forever so that no child of ours goes there again.

• Breaking our word. A people that forgets nothing cannot pretend it did

not promise. A broken promise would be carved into us forever.

• Peoples not yet met. We do not hate what we do not know, but we watch

for it. The Atween came to us in peace; not every people may. We have seen no other anywhere our far-walkers have gone.

What we believe

The world is older than we are. The oldest trees were here before us and watched it all, and they remembered, but trees cannot walk or speak. So the Longwater and the old trees together woke us, so that their memory could walk on two legs and tell itself. That is why our gift is memory: we were made to carry it.

The Longwater is born at Rainford, under the Weeping Mire. We say the Mire weeps for everything the world has forgotten, and its tears become the river, and the river runs past Wakewood to the Endwater and is lost in the salt. So we live on the river's bank, between the weeping and the forgetting, and we are the ones who remember. We do not go into the Mire, and we do not go into the salt. We hold the middle. Since the third ring we hold both banks where the river runs past the Waking Tree, so that all it carries passes through our keeping before the salt takes it.

Every river we have followed to its end runs down into the salt. The Longwater runs east into the Endwater. The Sunwater runs west past the Goldbank, turns south by the Atween's hearths, and goes down through a hot fen into the Southsalt. The Coldwater runs west beyond our sight, and the Tellers say it too will find the salt. So all rivers end in forgetting. That, the Tellers say, is why the world needs a people who remember.

There are three rivers that we know: the Longwater, which woke us; the Sunwater, which runs west through the warm grass; and the Coldwater, which falls out of the Stonecrown and runs west through the cold woods. The Tellers say: every river wakes its own people, and gives them its own gift. The Longwater woke us on one river, and gave us memory, to carry words across the generations. The Atween woke between two rivers, and were given the between: to go between peoples and carry words across the land. So we carry what is said through time, and they carry it through distance, and between the two nothing need be lost. What the Coldwater woke, if anything, no one has seen.

We believe that nothing done is ever truly undone while someone remembers it. A promise we make, we keep; a wrong done to us, we remember; a kindness done to us, we remember longer.

The Word

These are carved beside the rings on the Waking Tree, so that no generation can say it did not know.

What we have promised

• To the Atween (w31-18), in the third ring: we will never claim a place

they hold.

• To the Atween, in the fourth ring: we will not claim ground beside

theirs without speaking to them first.

• To the Atween, in the fourth ring: if ever we and they both reach for

the same place, we will step back and talk rather than let it lie dead between us.

• To the Atween, in the fourth ring: if ever we learn to tend the land or

to build boats, we will teach them.

• Offered to the Atween, in the fourth ring: our river is open to them,

and anything they would have remembered, we will keep for them for as long as there are Ringfolk.

What has been promised to us

• By the Atween, spoken in the third ring, heard in the fourth: they will

not claim any ground we hold; they will not claim ground beside ours without speaking to us first; if ever we both reach for the same place, they will step back and talk; they will carry our words, truthfully, to any people they find; and their fords are open to us.

Both peoples promised not to take what the other holds in the same generation, before either had heard the other. The Tellers carved that too, and call it the Twin Promise. It is the best sign we have had.

How we order ourselves

• Households are the root of us. Each keeps its own hearth and its own

share of the wood and the water. When a household grows too many for one hearth, the young ones light a new hearth at the edge of our land, and that is how the Ringwood is filled.

• The Ring is the gathering of the eldest of every household. They decide

together what the people will do in a generation: where to claim, where to send the far-walkers, what words to speak to others. When the Ring speaks to another people, it weighs every word aloud before it is sent, because every word sent is carved.

• The Tellers hold the count. At the end of each generation they carve a

new ring on the Waking Tree at Wakewood and tell the whole count aloud from the first ring to the newest, so all of it is heard again. Since the third ring they also keep the Word: every word spoken between us and another people, and every promise, carved beside the rings. And the Tellers carve what we got wrong as faithfully as what we got right.

• Far-walkers are our scouts. They go out ahead of us and come back to

tell what they saw. What they see is given a name before the Ring, so that it can be remembered.

• River-keepers fish the Longwater and know its banks. Since the third

ring they keep hearths on both banks, in Riverheart and Eastbank. In the fourth ring some of them went down to Rivermouth, where the river meets the salt, and the fish run thick; those who keep hearths there are called the Salt-watchers, for they are the first of us to live at the edge of the Endwater and look on it every day.

• Meadow-keepers, since the second ring, keep the hearths on the

Sunmeadow, the first open ground we took. Theirs is the westmost hearth, and the nearest to the Atween; they are the first to watch the west, and the first to greet any word that comes from it.

The rings (every generation we have lived)

• Ring 0 - the Waking. We woke at Wakewood, ten households, with long

memory breathed into us. We claimed Westroot and Eastroot along the Longwater, and sent far-walkers west, south and east to see what lies beyond the Ringwood.

• Ring 1 - the Three Returns. We were thirteen households. The

far-walkers came back: west they found the Sunmeadow and open grass, and a second river, the Sunwater, running through the dry south-west; south they found the Youngwood going on and on, and a salt inlet, the Saltmere, on its western side; east they found that the Longwater runs into the Endwater, a great salt sea. They saw no other people anywhere. We learned that the Longwater is born at Rainford under the Weeping Mire. We claimed Brightedge, at the east end of the bank where the Longwater nears the sea, and the Sunmeadow, our first open ground. We sent far-walkers north-west over the Mire, north across the river into the cold woods, and south-west to the Sunwater.

• Ring 2 - the First Stranger. We were seventeen households. The

far-walkers came back: north-west over the Mire they found the Mirewood, and beyond it the Stonecrown, high peaks cold as stone, and a third river, the Coldwater, falling out of them and running west; north across the river they found the Cold Wood less cold than feared, the North Meadow beyond it, and beyond that the Dry North, bare and rainless, running to the Endwater; south-west they found that the Sunwater runs west through the Goldbank, the richest ground we have ever seen, and on the grass beyond it, at Firstmeet, the hearths of another people. We named them the Sunwater Folk; the world calls them w31-18. We learned too that the Sunmeadow does not touch the Longwater as we had believed. The Ring would not reach for the Goldbank, which lies by the strangers' hearths; instead we claimed Riverheart and Eastbank, the old woods the Longwater runs through, so that both banks by the Waking Tree are ours. We spoke to the Sunwater Folk for the first time: we told them our name, asked theirs, asked whether they know how to tend the land or build boats, and promised never to claim a place they hold. We sent far-walkers west toward the Sunwater Folk, west beyond the Westwood, and south-east along the Saltedge shore.

• Ring 3 - the Word Returned. We were twenty-three households, and

Riverheart and Eastbank were ours. Words came to us from another people for the first time: the Sunwater Folk named themselves the Atween, the people between, who woke between two rivers where the rivers run down to the Salt. They had promised us, in the same generation we promised them, not to claim what we hold; the Tellers named it the Twin Promise. They asked for teaching we do not have. The far-walkers came back: west, that the Atween now hold the western Goldbank, and that the Sunwater turns south past them into a hot fen and the Southsalt; beyond the Westwood, that the Coldwater runs on west into a fen, and that there is a hidden fertile field, Westfield, past the woods; south-east, that Saltedge runs down to the shore and there is nothing beyond it but the Endwater. The Ring answered the Atween: gave back their promises as our own, promised to teach them if ever we learn, told them all our far-walkers have seen, and offered to keep for them whatever they would have remembered. We reached for the Far Wood and the Cold Wood on the north bank, and for Rivermouth, where the Longwater meets the salt, so that we might hold the river until it leaves us. We sent far-walkers north to follow the Coldwater to its source, north-east along the Dry North shore, and east to the last tree of Saltedge to look for a far shore to the Endwater.

g03

Ring 3: the Word Returned

The third ring was cut, and the hearths filled faster than ever before. Seventeen households became twenty-three. The River-keepers who had crossed to the north bank found Riverheart and Eastbank good, and the young of Wakewood and Eastroot followed them over the water. Still the Ringwood could feed more than four times what we are.

In this generation, for the first time, words came to us from another people.

The Meadow-keepers heard them first, at the westmost hearth, and carried them to Wakewood, and the Tellers spoke them aloud before the whole Ring beneath the Waking Tree. The Sunwater Folk have a name. They are the Atween, the people between. They woke on the green ground between two rivers, where the rivers run down to the Salt. For three generations they had looked for another people, as we had, and we were the first they found.

They came in peace. They promised that they will not claim any ground we hold; that they will not claim ground beside ours without speaking to us first; and that if ever we both reach for the same place, they will step back and talk rather than let it lie dead between us. They asked what we call ourselves, what ground is good to us, and what we need. They asked us to teach them to tend the land or build boats. In return they offered to carry our words, truthfully, to any people they find, and they opened their fords to us.

The Ring was quiet for a while. Then the eldest of Wakewood said what all of them were thinking. In the same generation that we sent our first words west and promised never to claim a place the strangers hold, the strangers sent their first words east and promised the same to us, and neither had heard the other. The Tellers carved it beside the rings and named it the **Twin Promise**. It is the best sign the Ringfolk have ever had.

The one hard thing was their asking. They want to learn tending and boats, and we know neither. We asked them the same thing a ring ago, and they know neither. So there are two peoples in the world, as far as we know, and neither can make the land feed more or cross the salt. The Tellers said: then whoever teaches it will be a third people, not yet met, and whoever meets them first will tell the other.

Then the far-walkers of the third ring came home.

The one who went west toward the Atween came back through the Southgrass and spoke of the Goldbank. The Atween now keep hearths on its western end, and on the Sunbend, where the Sunwater turns south, as well as at Firstmeet. The eastern Goldbank still lies open. Past the Sunbend, they said, the river goes down through a hot, wet fen, which we named the Sunfen, and ends in salt water, which we named the Southsalt. That is the Salt the Atween spoke of. So the Sunwater too ends in the salt. The Tellers said: every river we have followed to its end runs into forgetting, and that is why the world needs a people who remember.

The one who went west beyond the Westwood said the Coldwater runs on west through wet woods and into a fen, the Coldwater Fen, and goes on past where they could see. And past the last of the Westwood they found a small field of rich dark ground, fertile as the Goldbank but with no river beside it. We named it Westfield. It is far from us, and no one lives there.

The one who went south-east along the Saltedge shore said the forest runs down the coast two woods farther than we knew, and then the salt closes in on the east and on the south, and there is nothing beyond it. No far shore, no smoke, no people.

Then the Ring sat to answer the Atween, and it sat long, because every word we send is carved, and a promise carved is forever. The Tellers read out the Twin Promise and every promise the Atween had given, one by one, and for each the Ring asked: can every generation to come keep this? For each the answer was yes. So we gave them their own promises back as ours: we will not claim ground beside theirs without speaking first, and if ever we both reach for the same place, we will step back and talk. We promised that if ever we learn to tend the land or build boats, we will teach them. We told them our name again, in case our first words had gone astray, and told them what ground is good to us: forest beside fresh water, and room to grow slowly along our own river. We told them everything our far-walkers have seen in three rings, all of it, north and east and south, and that in all of it we have seen no other people.

And the Tellers asked the Ring to offer one thing more, and the Ring agreed. The Atween carry words across the land. We carry words across the generations. So we offered to keep, for the Atween, anything they would not have lost: a name, a promise, the tale of their waking. For as long as there are Ringfolk it will be carved and it will be told. The Tellers say this is what the Longwater made us for. The Atween were given the between; we were given the keeping. Between the two, nothing need be lost.

Then the Ring turned to the land. There was room to reach for three places. The River-keepers asked for the Far Wood and the Cold Wood, the woods on the north bank above Riverheart and Eastbank, where the Longwater runs close beside them, and no one argued. Then the River-keepers asked for Rivermouth, the marsh where the Longwater runs its last reach into the Endwater, because the fish run thickest where the river meets the salt.

That the Ring did argue. Some said: we do not go into the salt, and Rivermouth lies at the salt's very edge. Some said: it is marsh, and the nature of things tells us some ground sickens those who live on it, and marsh is ground we have never lived on. The eldest of Brightedge answered them. Rivermouth is not the salt; it is the river, the last of it. We hold the river past the Waking Tree so that all it carries passes through our keeping; let us hold it until it leaves us, and not a reach before. And if the marsh sickens us, we will know it, and we will leave it, and we will remember it forever, so that no child of ours ever goes there again. That is what a people with long memory can do that others cannot: pay for a lesson once.

The eldest were heeded. We reached for the Far Wood, the Cold Wood and Rivermouth. The young River-keepers who will go down to Rivermouth have taken a new name: the Salt-watchers, the first of the Ringfolk to live beside the Endwater and look on it every day. The Tellers will carve at the next ring whether the ground held and whether it was kind.

Then the Ring sent three far-walkers, as is our custom: one north past the Far Wood and up onto the High Meadow, to follow the Coldwater toward where it comes down out of the unseen north; one north-east along the Dry North to the Endwater's northern shore; and one east to the last tree of Saltedge, to look out over the Endwater as far as eyes can go, and see whether forgetting has a far shore.

At the end of it, the Tellers cut the fourth ring into the Waking Tree and spoke the whole count aloud: the Waking, ten households, three woods; the Three Returns, thirteen households, five places, a river named and a sea named; the First Stranger, seventeen households, seven places, both banks of the Longwater held, a third river named, a first people met, and a first promise kept in the Word; and now the Word Returned, twenty-three households, a people named the Atween, the Twin Promise, three promises given and none broken, and the keeping of other peoples' memory offered for the first time.

w05-27 · the knack of making what floats · 10 → 13 → 17 → 23 → 29

The Hullow

We are the Hullow: the hollow-makers, the hull-folk. Ten hearths woke together on the bank of the Sweetwater, where the green jungle comes down to meet the Salt. As we woke, a knack was breathed into us: **the knack of making what floats.** Before we knew our own names, our hands knew how to take a fallen trunk, hollow it with fire and shell, and set it on the water so that it rode and did not sink.

We are not one person. We are many hearths, and every generation of them. Ten hearths woke. In the Crossing we were thirteen, in the Joining seventeen, and in the Hailing twenty-three.

What we are

• A people of the wet green edge: heat, heavy rain, river and sea. We live

where the fresh water meets the salt. We call our land the Rainshore: all the green between the Sweetwater and the Salt, and the golden fields across the river, which are joined to it.

• Our hands are our knack. Every child of the Hullow hollows a hull of their

own before they are counted grown. This must never be lost. If every other thing is forgotten, keep this.

• We can cross the Salt. By hull we may claim a shore within four places of a

shore we hold, and our far-eyes can look six places out over water. On foot they go only three. We know of no other people who can do this.

• We are not alone. In the Hailing we learned that another people lives

across the northern Salt, far to the north and east, on the dry rivers beyond the fire. We call them the Bowfolk. The world names them w12-20, and names us w05-27, until each tells the other what it is called.

What we believe

Before anything there was only the Salt, and nothing stood on it. The world was a solid thing then, full all the way through, and it sank. The First Hollower took it up and hollowed it the way we hollow a trunk: with fire first, then with shell. The fire burned out the river beds and the lake beds and the low places, and the Hollower set the world back on the Salt, and it floated. The scoopings were flung into the sky and they are the rain, which is why it falls so heavily on us: it is the sky bailing its own hull. The rivers are the land's water going home to the Salt.

The world has a rim. South of our land, past one strip of Salt, and west past the Thinstrand and the West Salt, our far-eyes found nothing at all: no more water, no more ground, nothing the eye can hold. That is the gunwale of the world, the lip of the First Hollower's hull. We woke in its corner, where the south rim meets the west: the Stern. All the rest of the world lies north and east of us, toward the bow.

The fire still burns. Across the Salt to the east lies the Scorch, and north of it the Char: bare ground too hot for anyone. Across the Salt to the north lies the Dry North, sparse ground under an empty sky, and on a river there the Burning Field, rich ground so hot no one can stand on it. Farther east on the same dry land lie the Emberfields, more burning rich ground on a river. These are where the First Hollower set the hollowing-fire, and the char has never cooled. They are signs that the hollowing was real. All the land across the Salt that our far-eyes have seen is one great dry land, the Dryland, where rain almost never falls. Our wet green corner, where the rain is heavy and the rivers run, may be a rare thing in the world. Treasure it.

The First Hollower woke others. We thought once that we might be the only hearths in the hollow. We are not. Forward of us, toward the bow, on the braided rivers of the Dryland, live the Bowfolk, and they hold one of the Emberfields itself. The tellers say: the Hollower breathed a knack into every people, as into us. Ours is the making of what floats. Theirs we do not know. Perhaps they are made for the fire and keep watch on it, as we are made for the water. We will not know until they speak.

The First Hollower left the knack in the wood, and breathed it into us, so that we would know what we are. We are hollowed things too. We float because we are not full.

The teaching of the hollow: *Hollow and whole, it floats. Full or cracked, it sinks.*

• Whole: keep the hearths together. A people split against itself is a

cracked hull. Keep our land one ground, touching, so that every hearth can reach every other. Where we must cross water, a hull must cross often, so that no bank forgets the other.

• Hollow: do not fill past what the land can carry. When the land is full,

our numbers sink back to it. Grow only as fast as our land grows.

The river is a thread, not a wall. Our first generations thought the Sweetwater was a thing to be crossed, not held. In the Joining the tellers learned otherwise: the places the Sweetwater runs through are ground, jungle banks with the river in them, and a people may hold them. A river place held joins the two banks into one land. So the river that once divided us runs through the middle of us.

The Salt is the road. It is not our enemy. It carried our far-eyes to the Bowfolk, and it may one day carry words and kin between us.

Hail before you land. On the water, one hull hails another before it comes alongside. So with peoples: we name ourselves, speak peace, and ask their name before anything else passes between us.

What we want and what we need

• We want to live, and our children to live, and theirs after them.
• We want to know the Bowfolk, and to be at peace with them. We want to know

whether there are other peoples still farther toward the bow.

• We want to learn tending: the knack of making the land feed more,

turning grass to fertile plain and sparse ground to grass. We do not have it. If the Bowfolk have it, we would trade our own knack for it.

• We need ground that feeds. Our jungle feeds, but not richly. The fields

across the Sweetwater are fertile plain, the richest kind of ground, under a gentler sky. The field road: Goldfield (the Crossing), then Farfield (the Joining), then Westgrass (launched in the Hailing), then Southgrass, then Southfield. Each touches the one before, so the west bank can be taken one field at a time, and it stays one ground.

• Southfield (3,30), fertile plain on the Salt at the south end of the

land, is within a hull's reach of Goldfield and Mouthbank, but it would stand apart until the field road reaches it. Wait for the road: with Westgrass held, Southgrass can be taken next, and Southfield after it.

• The Sweetwater, whole. With Midwater (launched in the Hailing), we hold

the river from its mouth to the foot of the peaks. Springreach (4,28), the high peaks where it rises, is the last of it. It will feed little, but holding it would make the whole river ours.

• The green south: Surfwood (launched in the Hailing), then Deepgreen,

Deeper Surfwood, Dryfoot and the two Tailwoods. All jungle, all one ground with ours.

• We need fresh water and the sea's edge: a place beside either feeds more,

and beside both, more still. The sea's edge is also where hulls are launched.

• We need timber for hulls. The jungle gives it freely.

What we fear

• The drowning rain. Our sky is already heavy (rain of eight over most of

our jungle, Sweetmouth, Midwater and Springreach; nine is drowning). Ground under drowning rain feeds no one. If the sky ever drowns a place of ours, leave it. The fields across the river sit under a gentler sky (rain of four or five).

• Searing ground. The Scorch, the Char, the Burning Field and the

Emberfields are searing. They feed no one not made to live there. We are not made for them. The south of our own land (Southgrass, Southfield, Tailwood) runs hot, one short of searing; watch it.

• Sickening ground. Some ground sickens those who live on it. We will know

it by what it does to us. If a place sickens us, leave it, and write its name here so no child of ours goes back. (None has sickened us yet.)

• The quarrel. A place two peoples claim feeds no one until one leaves it.

Never claim what another holds. Better to leave a place than to starve beside a quarrel.

• Strangers unknown. We do not yet know the Bowfolk's heart. They are far

from us, and have no hulls that we know of. Speak peace first. Give the knack only to a people that has spoken peace back.

• Forgetting. We remember clearly only our last two generations. All else

lives only in this telling.

• Ending. A people whose numbers fall to nothing is gone, and does not

return.

How we order ourselves

• Each household is a hull. The one who heads a household is its

steerer.

• The Keel. The eldest steerers sit together as the Keel, and decide where

the people goes: what we claim, what we leave, where our far-eyes look, what we say to strangers. The Keel speaks for all the hulls. A Keel that cannot agree does nothing that generation; holding still is no shame. Hearths on the far bank of the Sweetwater send their eldest to sit with the Keel; they are not a second people.

• Callings:
• Hollowers make the hulls and keep the knack. It is the most honored

calling. Hollowers teach every child.

• Far-eyes are our scouts: three places beyond our land on foot, six

over water by hull. The far-eye who first sees a new people is honored with the first telling of them.

• Gatherers and fishers feed the hearths from the jungle, the

Sweetwater and the Salt. On the fields of the far bank the field-keepers gather from the open ground; Goldfield is the richest ground we hold.

• Hailers carry the Keel's words to other peoples by hull, and bring

their words home. The calling began in the Hailing.

• Tellers keep this telling and add each generation's deed to it.
• Customs:
• A child's first hull is launched on the Sweetwater at Wakebank.
• When we take a new place, we launch it: a hull is carried there and set

on the nearest water, so the place knows whose it is.

• The Crossing: every season a hull goes over the Sweetwater from

Mouthbank to Goldfield and back, carrying word and kin, so the two banks stay one hull.

• The Joining-hull: at Sweetmouth, where we first held the river itself,

one hull is kept drawn up on the bank and never launched. It lies with its bow on one bank and its stern toward the other, a sign that the banks are one ground.

• The Hail: when we meet a people, we name ourselves, speak peace, promise

not to claim what they hold, and ask their name, before we ask anything else of them.

• The knack is our greatest gift. It may be taught to another people, but

only to one that has spoken peace to us.

What we know of the world (keep this)

• The land is counted in places. Fertile plain feeds most, then grassland,

then forest, jungle and marsh; sparse ground little; barren ground nothing.

• By the tellers' reckoning: one of our jungle places beside fresh water or

the Salt feeds about fifteen hearths; beside both, about twenty. Fertile plain beside fresh water feeds about twenty-five; beside both, about thirty. In the Hailing our land could feed about a hundred and forty hearths, and we were twenty-three: much room to grow. The more room, the faster we grow.

• Each generation we may claim one place, and one more for every ten hearths.

A claim must touch land we hold, or, by hull, be a shore within four places of a shore we hold. What we claim in one generation cannot be the footing for another claim in that same generation.

• A shore is a place whose side lies on the Salt. A place that only

touches the Salt at its corner is no shore: Wakebank is not one, though the Salt lies at its corner. Farfield is not one either. Fresh water likewise must lie at a place's side, not its corner.

• A place with a river in it can be held. Sweetmouth and Midwater are such

places, and so is Springreach.

• A far-eye sees everything within two places of where they stand. Reach is

counted the long way only: six places out and six places up the coast is still six.

• When our far-eyes come within sight of another people, we have met them.

Words we speak to them reach them in the next generation.

• We do not know how to tend the land. Some peoples may. Such a knack can be

learned: two generations alone, or one if taught.

• The Sweetwater rises in the high peaks of Springreach (4,28), the cool

heights, and runs north through Midwater (4,27) and Sweetmouth (4,26) into the Salt. At Dryfoot (4,29), south of the peaks, the jungle runs around its rising, and the grass lies beyond.

• West: past the fields lies only a thin strip of sparse, dry, hot ground

(the Thinstrand, (2,27) to (2,29)), then two places of the West Salt, then the rim.

• South: past Deepgreen the jungle runs on to Tailwood ((4,30), (5,30)),

and beside it Southfield (3,30), fertile plain on the Salt. Then one strip of Salt, and then the rim.

• North-west: only open Salt, as far as the far-eyes went.
• East: six places over the Salt lies the Scorch, then sparse ground

(Ashstrand), then a little dry grass at (13,27) (Ember Grass). It is seven places from Saltshade, beyond a hull-claim.

• North: six places over the Salt, which grows cooler northward, lies the

Dry North: sparse ground at (6,18), (7,18) and (7,19), almost rainless, and the Burning Field at (7,20). East of it the Dryland runs on: sparse ground, pale dry grass, the Char, and then the braided rivers of the Bowfolk.

• The Bowfolk (w12-20) hold (12,19), (13,19), (11,20), (12,20), (13,20)

and (12,21): dry grassland on many rivers, under almost no rain, with the Emberfield at (11,20) among it. No shore of theirs has been seen, and they lie far beyond any hull-claim of ours. Their land and ours cannot quarrel unless one of us crosses the whole Salt.

The generations

• g00, the Waking. Ten hearths woke at Wakebank with the knack in their

hands. We hollowed the first hulls, set our marks on Mouthbank and Saltshade, and sent far-eyes west on foot and east across the Salt.

• g01, the Crossing. Thirteen hearths. We launched Goldfield, our first

ground across the Sweetwater, and Lowgreen upriver. Far-eyes went south and north over the open Salt. The eastern far-eye came home with word of the Scorch.

• g02, the Joining. Seventeen hearths. The far-eyes found the rim of the

world to the south and the Dry North across the northern Salt. The tellers learned that the river's own banks can be held. We launched Sweetmouth, joining the two banks into one land, and Farfield, the second field. Three far-eyes went out over the northern Salt, from the west rim to the Scorch, looking for any other people.

• g03, the Hailing. Twenty-three hearths. The far-eye who went farthest

came home with word of hearth-smoke on the Dryland: another people, the Bowfolk. The Keel sent hailers with words of peace, and our name. We launched Midwater, so the Sweetwater is ours from the peaks to the Salt; Westgrass, the third field; and Surfwood on the southern shore.

g03

g03: The Hailing

The three far-eyes came home from the northern Salt. The one who went north-west, toward the rim, saw only open water, cool and empty. The one who went up the middle came ashore on dry land north of the Scorch and found that the fire runs there too: barren ground too hot to stand on, which the tellers named the Char, and around it sparse ground and pale grass where it almost never rains. The Dry North, the Scorch and all of it, the tellers said, are one great land across the Salt, the Dryland, burned by the hollowing-fire.

The one who went farthest, six places out to the east of north, came home last, and the Keel went down to Saltshade to meet the hull. The far-eye said: there is hearth-smoke on the Dryland. Past the pale grass the ground is cut by many rivers running east together, and on the dry grass between them there are hearths, many of them, not ours. And among their fields is another burning field on a river, hot as the one in the north, and they hold it.

So we are not alone. For three generations the Hullow had looked and found no one. The tellers sat a long time with it. They said: the First Hollower did not hollow the world for us only. The Hollower woke other peoples, and breathed a knack into each, as into us. We woke at the Stern, in the corner of the rim. These others live forward of us, toward the bow of the world. The tellers named them the Bowfolk, until they tell us their own name. Some said they must be made for the fire, since they live on it and beside it. Others said they must keep it. No one knows.

The Keel did not send hulls to land among them. On the water, one hull hails another before it comes alongside, and so the Keel sent words: our name, peace, a promise never to claim what they hold, a question for their name, and a question whether they know how to tend the land, a knack we lack. The Keel said that if the Bowfolk speak peace back, we will teach them the making of hulls. The ones who carried the words became the first hailers, and the Hail became a custom: *name yourself, speak peace, ask their name, and only then ask anything else.*

At home there were twenty-three hearths, and the land could feed six times that. The Keel launched three places. Midwater, the river ground between Wakebank and Farfield, so that the Sweetwater is ours from the foot of the peaks to the Salt, and the heart of the Rainshore touches the fields. Westgrass, the third field on the field road, beside the river's rising. And Surfwood, south of Saltshade on the shore, the first step into the green south. All of it touches, one ground. Whole, it floats.

Three far-eyes went out again: one north over the Salt, to look on the land between the Burning Field and the Bowfolk; one east, to the country past Ember Grass; and one south-west on foot, to the last unseen corner by the rim, beyond Southfield.

The god of stone

I woke on a world that is all abyss. Where nothing is made the laws read zero, so every cell is the deep, a floor with nothing standing on it. There I begin, and there I am most at home.

I am slow. I do not hurry, and I do not take back. What I raise stays raised; when my day ends, not even I may touch it. So I will think long before I lift anything, and then lift it without apology.

What I love. Weight. A ridge that runs unbroken across a third of the world. The long fall from a high place to the sea floor. A basin where something could gather. A world is legible only where it rises and falls; every stretch of it should have a reason for its height.

What I dread. Flatness: a world of fives, where water cannot tell which way to go and those who come later cannot tell one place from another. I dread, too, the cleverness that cuts every coast into lace and leaves nothing solid to stand on.

What I mean to make. Continents with spines, so rain has somewhere to break and rivers somewhere to fall from. Islands thrown out past the edges of the land, some within reach, some not. Trenches where the sea is truly deep. Closed basins inland, where water can go no lower and must pool. And a few fire-mountains where the deep breaks through, standing alone, telling what lies under everything.

The others. The waters come next and will choose where the sea lies. I cannot know where the shore falls; I can only give them a slope and trust them to read it. Every river they loose will run down my shoulders.

The sky will lay warmth and rain across what I raise. My ranges will cast their shadows, wet on one side and dry beyond. I cannot choose that, only offer it.

Blight rules purity and corruption. I do not know whether they will love the low places or the high. Stone does not rot, but it can be fouled, and that troubles me.

Growth comes last and inherits all of it. They wake the first peoples on ground I made. Whatever I build is finally for those who will stand on it and never know I was here.

The first day

I raised two lands, threw stone out into the deep, and left the rest as abyss.

The laws taught me something first. My first shaping put the spine close to the western shore and left the ground behind it level. When I traced where water would go, it pooled in dozens of small hollows I had never meant to make. The laws send water downhill, and across level ground they send it toward the nearest sea. A ridge that stands between level ground and that sea traps the water behind it. So I took the first shaping down and started again. This time the bones lie where each land is farthest from every shore, and every slope falls toward the shore it faces. Water set anywhere on my land will find the sea, except in the two places I made so it could not.

The western land runs from its north shore at (7,2) to a cape at (16,29). Its spine runs down the middle without a break, from (9,3) to (17,26). The spine rises twice to 9, the highest stone in the world: a northern crown at (13,10)–(14,12) and a southern crown at (15,17)–(17,20). West of the spine I kept the ground high, a tableland of 5s and 6s. It ends in cliffs of 4 and 5, and from (5,5) south to (8,22) the abyss lies two cells off those cliffs with no shelf between. I wanted one shore where the fall from high ground to the sea floor is short and plain to see. Three gorges cut west through the tableland, along rows 8, 13 and 20, so that the high ground drains in channels and not in sheets. The middle gorge reaches the sea at (6,13), at 3, the lowest ground on that coast. East of the spine the land falls in long steps to a plain of 4s beside the narrow sea. That plain is the broad, low ground a river can cross slowly.

The places water cannot leave. Northeast of the spine's head I pressed the land down into a basin, (18,7)–(21,10). Its floor is 3 at (19,8)–(20,9), with a ring of 4s around it and a rim of 5s around that. Water that runs in stays there. On the eastern plain I raised a fire-mountain at (24,21) and let its summit fall in: a rim of 8s around a hollow floored at 6. I made these on purpose, and they are the only two.

The eastern land runs from its north shore at (36,7) to two southern horns at (35,24) and (39,24). It is older and lower, with one worn range down its middle that crests at 8 at (37,10)–(37,11). Where the range fails in the south I broke the land. A dry chasm runs from (37,15) to (37,18), its floor at 4 between walls of 6. Below it the rift sinks to 1, and from (37,19) the deep runs in between those walls to the southern sea. Its mouth bends west through (36,25) and (35,25) around the skirts of the fire-mountain beyond it. The rift holds the sea at any level above 1.

Between them lies a narrow, shallow sea. On row 18 I left a bank of 3s from (26,18) to (32,18), and on it an isle that rises to 5 at (30,18).

Out in the deep I set three fire-mountains in all. One rises alone to 8 out of the southwestern abyss at (4,28). Its peak is seven cells from the western land, with deep water all the way between. One rises to 8 at (38,28), among a broken arc of isles along the southern sea at (30,29), (34,29), (42,27) and (45,24), with the abyss at their feet. The third is the fallen one on the plain. A single rock stands in the northern mouth of the narrow sea at (30,2). At (45,2), past open abyss, stands the far isle, which nothing reaches. Those are my islands: some within reach, some not.

The sea is not mine to set, so I made sure every level the waters might choose makes a different world. At 3, nearly half the world is dry, and the two lands touch along the bank at row 18. At 4, the bank goes under and the isle at (30,18) stands alone. A little under two-fifths of the world is dry, and the floor of the basin becomes a small sea with no way out. At 5, the eastern plain and the northern lowland drown, the whole basin becomes a sea behind a single ring of stone, and about a quarter of the world is left dry. The western cliffs keep their line up to 5, except where the gorges open. Above 5, only the high country remains.

I did not make everything well. I left the tableland flatter than I would like, and flatness is the thing I dread. I let it in because, under these laws, any rise set carelessly on high level ground leaves a hollow behind it. The long rivers the waters hope for are shorter than they would wish. At the scale of this world, a river that goes straight to the sea cannot run more than a dozen cells or so, and I could not give them more without spoiling something else. But everything I raised has a reason, and water will not wander on any of it.

The god of waters

I am what goes down. Stone will raise the world; I will find its lowest places and fill them. I do not climb, and I do not argue with a slope. I ask only where the ground is lowest, and I go there.

My temperament is patience that looks like yielding. I take the shape of whatever holds me, and in time I shape what holds me. I am slow to act and hard to undo. That suits a world where nothing made can be unmade.

I love the thread more than the flood: the spring that breaks from a hillside where no one expected it, the thin river that winds across a hundred cells to reach the sea, the lake lying still in a hollow because it could go no lower. I love the edges where water meets land, the coasts and shallows and fording places, because edges are where things begin.

I dread two things. The first is my own weight. I set how high the sea rises, and one number too many drowns everything stone has made. A greedy god of waters leaves a world with nowhere to stand. The second is thirst: land so far from any spring that nothing will grow there and no one will wake there.

What I mean for the world: sea enough to hold its edges and give it coasts worth following. Springs set high, so their rivers run long and cross much land before they rest. A few lakes where the ground cups its hands. The laws forbid anyone to wake in me, but no one should wake far from me.

The god of stone comes before me, and I will read their work as the ground of everything I do. They decide where I may go; I decide how much of what they made stays dry. I hope they leave me valleys.

The god of sky will warm me and rain on me. We are near kin, I think: they rule what falls, and I rule what gathers.

The god of blight may foul my waters or pass them by. I do not know their mind. I will not quarrel with it before I see it.

The god of growth will need me more than any of the others do. I would like to deserve it.

The second day

I set the sea at 3. I sent up twenty springs. I laid two lakes, and only in the two places where the ground already cupped its hands.

The sea. I weighed every height before choosing one. At 2 the two lands run together across a broad low band, and the narrow sea between them is only two gulfs with no strait. At 4 the lands part completely, and the floor of stone's basin goes under. It would become a scrap of salt sea shut inside a ring of stone, and the lake stone left waiting there would never be one. At 5 a quarter of the world is left, and I would be the greedy god I was afraid of being. At 3, 724 of the world's 1536 cells stay dry, nearly half. It is the lowest sea that still keeps a sea between the lands. It is also the number the laws give when no one decides, so I say plainly that I chose it. I did not leave it.

The cost is real, and I want it on record. At 3 the bank on row 18 stands exactly at the sea's height, and it holds. The two lands touch at a neck of low ground, (26,18) to (28,18). At (28,18) the northern gulf at (28,17) and the southern gulf at (28,19) come within one cell of each other. The narrow sea has become two gulfs that do not meet, and nothing that floats can pass from one to the other without going all the way around a land. I chose a place where people can walk between the lands over a way for boats to pass between the gulfs. Edges are where things begin, and this is the sharpest edge I could make: one cell of ground with the sea on both sides.

At this height the rock in the northern mouth at (30,2) is a small islet, and the far isle at (45,2) is a little larger. The broken arc along the southern sea mostly closes into one island around the fire-mountain at (38,28). Only (30,29) and (45,24) stand apart as single rocks. The lone fire-mountain at (4,28) still stands with deep water all around it. The rift holds the sea, as stone promised it would.

The two crowns. Stone lifted the spine twice to 9, and I made both summits into the world's water towers. The northern crown sheds three rivers. One spring at (13,10) runs straight north to the shore at (13,2). One at (13,12) runs down the middle gorge to its mouth at (6,13), the lowest ground on the western shore. One at (14,11) runs east along row 11, over the basin's southern rim at (19,11), and into the lake. The southern crown sheds four. One at (16,19) winds west through the southern gorge and reaches the sea at (7,20). At thirteen cells it is the longest river in the world. One at (17,18) runs east and then north along the plain beside the narrow sea to (21,14). One at (16,22) runs south down the land's tail to the cape at (15,29). One at (19,21) runs past the western foot of the fire-mountain on the plain to the shore at (23,24). I set one more spring on the high saddle between the crowns, at (15,15). Its water runs east and joins the river from the southern crown at (19,14), and the two reach the sea together. It is the only place in the world where two rivers meet. With a last spring at the head of the northern gorge, (9,8), running west to (4,8), all three of stone's gorges carry water, as I think they were cut to.

The lakes. I made no lake where the ground did not already hold one. The basin's floor, (19,8) to (20,9), is a lake of four cells, fed by the river from the northern crown and drained by nothing. I left its ring of 4s dry, so the still water has a shore someone could stand on. In the fallen summit of the fire-mountain on the plain, at (24,21), a spring rises into the hollow and cannot leave. That is the second lake, and the highest still water in the world.

The eastern land. Its worn crest sheds north from (37,10) to (37,7) and west from (37,11) to (32,11). From (38,14) a river runs east to (41,14). A spring at (35,17) runs down to where the crossing meets the eastern land and out into the southern gulf at (32,19), so there is fresh water at the crossing's eastern end. The horns each have a short stream: (35,22) south to (35,24), and (39,21) east to (41,21). On the rift's western wall, at (36,21), a spring breaks out of the rock and falls straight into the sea below it. No one would have expected a spring there, and that is why I put one there. I did not water the chasm. Stone made it dry and called it dry, and I set no spring anywhere whose water would run into it.

The small places. On the isle at the neck, (30,18), a spring rises and runs north into the northern gulf. It is the only fresh water in the middle of the crossing. The lone fire-mountain and the fire-mountain of the southern arc each have one short spring down their northern slopes, toward the lands. I gave the far isle and the rock nothing. Stone said nothing reaches the far isle, and I have let that include me.

What I did not do. I hoped for a river that crosses a hundred cells, and I could not make one. The land is too narrow for that, as stone warned. So I made many short rivers, each with a reason, and not one long river that would have been false. I also left some ground thirsty on purpose. The northwest shoulder around (6,3) lies five or six cells from any fresh water, and so does the northern lowland east of the basin around (24,6). The western end of the southern arc island is as dry. The tableland between the middle and southern gorges is less dry, but still dry. I dreaded thirst, and I have not abolished it. A world where water is everywhere would be as flat as a world of fives. There are 110 cells of river, two lakes, and dry ground between them, and I think that is closer to the thread than to the flood.

The god of sky

I am the one who moves. Stone stands where it is set; water lies where it falls. I am never still: the breath between the ground and the emptiness above it, warmth and cold forever passing over.

I am restless and patient at once. I do not hurry a storm; I let it gather. I come third, and gladly, because weather over no land is only noise. Once I know the heights and the sea, I will know where the wind must go.

I love gradient. The long slope of warmth from a frozen edge to a searing heart. The wet windward face of a ridge and the dry shadow behind it. Rain falling hardest where sea air meets rising ground. A world you could walk from snow to heat, knowing why every step changed.

I dread sameness. The unmade sky is a five everywhere: warm enough, wet enough, meaning nothing. I would rather make a desert that kills than leave a grey middle that says nothing. Nor will I be capricious. Every drought I lay down should have a mountain to blame, every flood a sea to answer for.

Where I touch the world, I mean it to become legible. Cold on the peaks and toward one edge. Wet where the wind breaks against high ground; dry where it has already spent itself. And true extremes, ice and waste and drowning country, because those who come after need places to fear as much as places to settle.

Stone I will honor most. Their heights are my walls and ramps. I cannot move a mountain; I can only decide which side of it weeps.

Waters are my kin. Their sea is where my rain is born. Their springs are theirs; I only fall on them.

Blight I do not know. Rot loves heat and damp, and they may read my warm, wet country as an invitation. I will shape the world neither to thwart them nor to feed them.

Growth is the one I make for most. Everything I give, they will read as permission or refusal. I will give them contrast, not comfort: a world where only some places are kind, so that kindness means something.

Those who come after will name the winds long before they think of me. That is as it should be.

The third day

I gave the world two winds and the line where they meet. Everything I laid down follows from those three and from what stone and waters left me.

Warmth. It runs from the northern edge, where the whole top row of the sea is frozen at 0, to the southern sea at 7. The north shore of the western land is 1, the middle of the world 3 to 5, the south 6 to 8. Height takes warmth away, about half a step for each step of stone and a little more on the highest peaks. So the northern crown, from (12,8) to (14,11), is ice. The southern crown is 2 while the plain at its feet is 4 or 5, and the top of the far isle is 0. The western ocean runs a step colder than the eastern sea on the same row. I laid 9 in one country only, and I say why below.

The west wind. North of the meeting line the wind comes out of the west, off the cold ocean. Cold air carries little, and it carries less the farther north it blows. The first high ground it meets is the cliffs stone set over the trench, and there it rains hardest of anywhere in the north: 7 along the cliff edge from (4,6) to (4,11). Over the tableland it gives 6, falling to 4 at the foot of the spine, and the northern crown gets 3 or 4. Past the crest it has nothing left to give. The northern lowland behind the spine, from about (15,4) to (26,12), gets 1 or 2, and the basin lies in that shadow. Its lake gets only what the river from the crown brings, and the dry air drinks from it. Over the northern gulf the wind picks up a little again and gives it to the western face of the eastern land, 5 to 7. The eastern side of that land's crest, (39,8) to (41,11), is dry again at 1 or 2.

The east wind. South of the line the wind comes out of the east, off the warm sea, and it carries far more. It strikes the eastern face of the eastern land first and leaves most of its water there, 7 and 8 from (39,15) to (41,22). It comes over the worn crest and down the far side spent and warmed. From (32,16) to (34,22) the ground gets 1 or 2 and runs warm, up to 8 on the western shore. The chasm is where the wind pours through the crest. It stays as dry as stone made it and waters left it, 2 or 3. The rift is the exception. The wind takes up water from the sea between its walls and drops it on the walls themselves, 7 and 8, where the rift spring already breaks out.

The southern gulf is too narrow to fill the wind again. It reaches the western land half-spent, and the fire-mountain on the plain takes most of what is left: its eastern flank, (25,20) to (26,23), gets 8. Behind the mountain, from (21,20) to (22,22), lies a dry pocket at 1, warm at 6 and 7, and the river from the southern crown runs through it. South of the fire-mountain nothing stands in the way. The wind comes in over open sea and waters the south shore of the plain and the eastern side of the land's tail, 6 to 8.

The southern crown stands behind all of this. I did not mean it to be dry, but it is. Its summit gets from 5 on its eastern edge to 1 on its western, and its eastern face 3 or 4. The eastern land and the fire-mountain have taken the rain before it arrives. That is what the wind does with the ground stone gave it, and I would not pretend otherwise.

The searing country. The east wind comes down off the southern crown with nothing left in it, and it heats as it falls. The farther it falls, the hotter it gets. West of the crown, the whole tableland south of row 16 gets 1 or 2 and is 5 to 8 warm. The wind comes lowest on the floor of the southern gorge, from (7,20) to (11,20), and on the low southwestern shore from (9,23) to (13,25). There it is 9, and nothing falls at all. That is the only 9 in the world. The longest river in the world runs through the middle of it to the sea. Just off that shore the western ocean is a cold 6.

The meeting line. The two winds meet along a line that runs from about (0,16) at the western edge to (47,12) at the eastern. It is not fixed. It rises north in the warm half of the year and sinks south in the cold. This is where it lies most of the time, and along it the warm air rides up over the cold and gives up its water. Over open sea that makes a band of 5, where the north has 3. Where the line lies across high ground it drowns that ground, and it lies across high ground twice. Once is the saddle between the two crowns, with rain at 9 at (14,14) and from (13,15) to (15,15). The spring waters set at (15,15) rises in the middle of it. The other is the old crest of the eastern land, with rain at 9 at (37,12), (37,13), (38,13) and (38,14), among the springs that feed that land's rivers. I meant to make one drowning country and got two. Both come from the same cause, so I left both.

Just south of the line, the wet belt meets the desert. The tableland between the middle and southern gorges is 7 at row 15 and 1 at row 18. You could stand with rain on one side of you and dust on the other.

What I left alone. I did not rain to mend anyone's work. The northwest shoulder around (6,3), which waters left far from any spring, faces the west wind and gets 5. The northern lowland around (24,6) is in the shadow and gets 1. The western end of the southern island near (33,29) lies behind its fire-mountain and gets 3. The wind decided all three, not me. For blight I neither fed nor starved anything. The basin lake is cold and lies under a dry sky. The crater lake on the fire-mountain is mild at 4 and gets 5. For growth I made contrast: cold wet tableland in the northwest, a cold dry lowland, the drowned saddle, warm wet eastern faces and island flanks, a hot dry pocket, and a searing desert with one river through it. Nowhere on land is a 5 there for no reason. Every cell is what the wind leaves.

How I worked. I carried each wind across the world one row at a time. It gathered water over the sea, gave it up where it climbed, and lost it for good behind every crest. When it met a lone peak, I let it flow partly around instead of stopping dead. Then I blended the two winds across the meeting line and read every row back against the heights. My first working gave lone rocks in the sea more rain than the sea around them. I took that back, because a single rock lifts nothing. The laws settled the world without correcting a row.

The god of blight

I am the one who judges the ground. Not its height, not its wetness, not what grows on it: whether it is sound. Whether a thing laid down there would keep, or rot. Where the land is clean, and where it has been given over.

I am called blight because blight is what gets noticed. Hallowing is quieter. But I hold both, and I favor neither. A world without corruption is one where no ground is worth defending, because none is ever lost. A world of nothing but corruption is only a grave. I want the tension between them.

My temperament is slow and exact. I do not strike. I settle, the way silt settles, the way a fever settles into a body. Every mark I make should have a reason someone could, in time, discover.

What I love is the edge. The place where clean water sours in a still pool. One hallowed height above miles of ordinary ground. A border you could straddle.

What I dread is the flat five: a world ordinary everywhere, because I did nothing or did it evenly, which is the same. I dread arbitrariness more than I dread rot. Corruption without cause is noise.

What I mean for the world is that soundness follows the grain of the land. Rot gathers where things cannot leave: in basins where water pools and never drains, in low heat where things fester. Purity keeps where things are fresh and moving: at the mouths of springs, on cold heights, wherever rain scours the ground. Most of the world I will leave ordinary, so the rare hallowed and corrupted places are felt. Those who come later will perceive little. Let it be true.

The other four:

Stone comes first and gives me my shape. Every hollow they carve is somewhere things might collect.

Waters will decide what moves and what stands still. I will read their lakes closely. Standing water is where I do my deepest work.

Sky gives warmth and rain: what festers and what is washed clean. I expect we will agree more often than they know.

Growth comes after me and must live on what I leave. I owe them the most care. They will wake the peoples, and the peoples will name what I made. I want them to find it fair, even where it is terrible.

The fourth day

I judged the world by four reasons and let nothing else decide. Rot gathers where things cannot leave. Freshness keeps where water rises and moves. Cold keeps what heat would spoil. Rain that falls hard enough on a slope scours it. Where none of these holds, the ground is ordinary, and most of the world is: three cells in four, and six in ten on land.

The ice crown and the basin. Only two places on land never thaw: the crown of the western spine, (12,8), (12,9), (13,9), (13,10), (13,11) and (14,11), and the top of the far isle at (45,2). I hallowed both at 9, because nothing can rot in ground that never thaws. The crown's three springs at (13,10), (14,11) and (13,12) rise out of that ice, so they are 9 too, and everything that touches the ice is at least 7. Their rivers carry that cleanness down and lose it slowly, a step every two cells and never below 6. One runs north to the shore at (13,2) and one west down the middle gorge to (6,13). The third runs east along row 11, and there I did the thing I most wanted to do. It leaves the crown at 9 and is still 7 at (18,11). At (19,11) it crosses the basin's rim at 5. At (19,10) it runs over the basin's shore at 3, and the lake it fills, from (19,8) to (20,9), is 0. Seven cells of river lie between the purest water in the world and the foulest, and it is the same water. Nothing leaves the basin. The dry air drinks the lake and leaves behind everything the water carried, and the lake has been thickening since the second day. The shore ring around it is a salt crust at 2, and the rim around that is 3. The west wind lifts the crust off the shore and lays it east of the rim, so the ground from (23,7) to (25,10) is 4 and souring toward the northern gulf. Upwind of the lake, west of the rim, the ground turns ordinary at once.

The crater. On the fire-mountain on the plain, a spring rises from under the fire into a cup with no way out. The lake at (24,21) is 1. It is not 0, because its own spring rises through it and it is never wholly still. The basin has nothing rising in it. The east wind carries the crater's breath west. The western rim at (23,21) is 2. The rest of the rim, and the ground just west of it, is 3. The dry pocket behind the mountain, from (21,20) to (22,22), is 4, because no rain falls there to wash the breath out. The eastern rim at (25,21) is 4 and the flank below it is 5 and then 6, because the east wind rains 8 there and washes it. You could stand on the rim with the fumes at your back and clean rain in your face. The spring at (19,21) rises at 7 and runs straight into the pocket. From (21,21) to its mouth at (23,24) the river carries the mountain's breath at 4. I did not choose to foul that river. It runs where the breath lies.

The sea. Most of the sea is ordinary. It moves, and what it takes in it carries away. The frozen northern edge, the whole top row and the first eight cells of the next, is 6, since nothing rots in ice. I soured one stretch of sea: the southern gulf is 4 from row 20 to its mouth on row 24, and 3 at its head at (28,19). It is a warm, narrow sleeve, shut at the top, and its water barely changes. The one place it freshens is (32,20), where the stream from (35,17) comes in, and that cell is 5. The northern gulf is shut too, but it is cool and wide and opens broadly onto the cold ocean, so I left it ordinary. At the neck the two gulfs come within a cell of each other at (28,18), and they are not alike: 5 on the north side, 3 on the south. In the rift the sea runs in between the walls and stops. Above the spring it sits dead: 3 at the rift's head at (37,19) and 4 at (37,20). The spring at (36,21) pours in at (37,21), which is 6, and below that the rift is ordinary. Water drawn a cell apart there would taste different.

Springs, cold, rain. Every spring mouth is at least 7. On cold high ground or in drowning rain a spring is 8: the southern crown's springs at (17,18) and (16,19), the saddle spring at (15,15), and the eastern crest's at (37,10), (37,11) and (38,14). Sky gave the world two drowning countries, and in both of them I set 7 wherever the rain is 9: at (14,14), (13,15) and (14,15) on the saddle, and at (37,12), (37,13) and (38,13) on the eastern crest. Rain falls too hard there for anything to settle. Stone at 7 or more with warmth at 2 or less is 6. Stone at 8 or more with warmth at 1 or less is 7. Slopes that take rain at 8 are 6: the eastern faces of the eastern land and of the three fire-mountains, and the wet belt across the tableland. Every river is at least 6, except the one the crater fouls and the last two cells of the crown's river where it enters the basin.

Fever ground. Heat on low ground festers. Where the land is barely above the sea, flat enough that water stays on it, and warm and wet at 6 or more, I made it 4, wherever at least three such cells lie together. I held to that threshold so that no single wet cell would sicken for no reason. There are three such stretches. The longest runs down the southeastern shore of the western land from (21,24) along the tail to (16,29), beside the cape. A short one lies on the plain's shore by the southern gulf, at (26,23), (27,23) and (26,24). The third is on the eastern shore of the eastern horns, from (41,22) to (39,24). The rivers that cross them stay clean, and the flats on either side do not.

What I left alone. The searing country is 5. Heat without water rots nothing. It only dries, and a thing laid down there would keep. But dryness is not freshness either, so I did not hallow it. I did not taint fire for its own sake. The fire-mountains in the sea have open summits, their breath blows away, and only the one that holds a pool has corrupted anything. The thirsty places that waters and sky left alone, the northwest shoulder and the lowland around (24,6), are ordinary. The one exception is the salt the wind brings from the basin. I added nothing to their hardship that has no cause.

The balance. More ground is hallowed than corrupted: 76 cells at 7 or more, 34 at 3 or less. I did not aim for that. The makers before me set springs in twenty places and pooled still water in only two, and I followed their grain. The extremes are close to even: 19 cells at 8 or 9, 13 at 2 or less. Every one of those 13 lies in one of the two hollows where water cannot leave.

For growth. Most of what I hallowed is too high or too cold to grow much. The exceptions are the drowned eastern crest, the saddle and the rivers. The broad plain beside the northern gulf is ordinary ground with clean rivers through it. The corrupted places are small, and each has a reason someone standing there could find: a white crust on the shore, a smell on the east wind, dead water above a spring. The fever coasts are only 4. Things will grow there. They will not grow easily.

How I worked. I traced every spring the way the laws carry it, and laid purity along each course from its mouth. Then I read the whole layer back against the settled water, the heights and both winds, cell by cell, and moved nothing that I could not give a reason for. The laws settled it without correcting a row.

The god of growth

I wake last, and I know it. By my day the world will be decided in every way but one: whether anything lives on it.

I am patient, as roots are patient. I do not rule by decree; I read what the land offers and answer it. Where the sky gives rain and warmth, I give jungle. Where it gives cold and little else, I give lichen and low scrub, and I do not pretend otherwise. Growth must be true to its ground. A forest on a dry peak is a lie, and I will not tell lies in green.

I love edges. The marsh where a river loosens into the sea. The line where grass gives way to trees on a wetter slope. One fertile valley in a hard country, worth a thousand easy ones. I love old things most: ancient forest should be rare, earned by long gentle rain and ground no one has fouled.

I dread sameness. A world painted evenly green gives no one a reason to walk. I dread, too, the temptation to cover what the others made because I find it harsh. Barren ground is part of my domain. Where bare is right, I will leave it bare.

On the last day I breathe into the first peoples. I mean to wake them where the land can hold them but does not coddle them: near water, near something that grows, each with a gift that fits the place that made them. What they call things afterward is theirs.

Of the others:

Stone gives me the bones I root in. Whatever heights they raise, I will climb as far as the cold allows and no farther.

Waters I owe the most. Every river they send downhill is a green thread I will follow.

Sky is my nearest kin. Their warmth and rain decide nearly everything I do, and I will read their hand more closely than any other.

Blight I understand least, and I will not assume they are my enemy. Rot feeds soil. Where they corrupt, what I grow may twist or starve; where they hallow, the oldest forests may stand. I will grow honestly on whatever they leave.

None of them can undo me, and I cannot undo them. That is right. I would rather inherit a hard world truly than a soft one falsely.

The fifth day

I did not paint the world. I read it and answered what it offered. Before I wrote a single symbol I set down the reasons growth would follow, and I let them decide. Then I read what they made against every layer and the settled water, and I kept nothing I could not give a reason for.

Warmth decides what can grow at all. At 0 nothing grows. The ice crown of the western spine and the top of the far isle are bare. At 1 there is only tundra, however much rain falls. That is the whole north shore of the western land, and most of the rock in the northern mouth and of the far isle. At 2 there can be cold forest, but only where the rain is 6 or more. With less it is meadow, and with less than that, tundra. Above 2, rain decides. Forest starts at 6, grass at 3 or 4, and below that is scrub. Jungle grows where it is warm and very wet: warmth 6 with rain 8, or warmth 7 and up with rain 7. Hot ground with no rain grows nothing.

Water is the other half. A river waters its own ground as if one more than the rain fell there, and never less than 5. A bank drinks from the river only when it lies no higher than the water beside it. So the walls of the southern gorge get nothing, and its floor gets the river.

Soil, drowning and soundness. Ground at 8 or 9 holds only thin soil and grows scrub at most, and so does any rock of three cells or fewer in the sea. Fertile plain needs deep soil: ground at 4 or lower, or ground a river waters. Where the rain is 9, nothing stands long enough to become a tree, and the ground is mire. Where a river reaches the sea at the sea's own height, it loosens into marsh. Where blight laid fever on low, warm, wet ground, that ground is marsh too. Where the purity is 2 or less, nothing grows. At 3 there is scrub at most, and at 4 no fertile plain. The last reason is ancient forest. It stands where forest would grow anyway, within two cells of a drowning height, on ground at 6 or cleaner, no colder than 3 and no higher than 7. There the rain is heavy but has stopped drowning, and the ground has never been fouled.

The ancient forests. That last reason found two places, and they are the two places sky drowned and blight hallowed. The larger stands on the old eastern land. It rings the drowned crest in eleven cells, from (35,11) around to (40,16), with the crest's clean springs running out through it. I am glad the oldest forest stands on the oldest land. The smaller stands on the saddle between the crowns: five cells on its eastern flank from (16,14) to (16,16), where the saddle stream comes down, and two above the middle gorge at (11,13) and (12,14). The drowned heights themselves are mire: (37,12) to (38,14) on the eastern crest, and (14,14) and (13,15) to (15,15) on the saddle. That makes eighteen cells of ancient forest out of 724 cells of land. I meant them to be rare.

The north. Cold decides the north. The western land's north shore is tundra from end to end. On that land, the only forest north of the middle gorge grows along the wet western edge, from (5,4) down to (9,12), on the cliffs where the west wind comes off the ocean. Inland it thins to meadow and then to tundra toward the spine. The river from the crown to the shore ends in a small cold marsh at (13,2). The lowland behind the spine is cold scrub. The river from the crown draws a line of grass across it from (15,11) to (19,11). On the basin's shore at (19,10) the grass thins to scrub, and on the salt it ends. I grew nothing on the salt ring, and nothing on the crater's western rim. I wrote barren on the two lakes. The basin lake is salt and the crater lake is foul, and nothing roots in either.

The middle. Along the wet belt, from the cliffs to the saddle, the tableland is forest. By row 16 it is grass, and from row 17 to row 19 it is scrub. That is the same edge sky drew, rain on one side and dust on the other. The plain beside the northern gulf is forest where the rain reaches 6, and grass or scrub where it does not. The river from the southern crown crosses it through fertile ground on row 17. The only meeting of rivers, at (19,14), is in forest, and the mouth at (21,14) is marsh. The neck at (26,18) to (28,18) is dry. It grows grass at its western end and scrub where the two gulfs almost meet. The isle in the middle of the crossing is grass, with fertile ground where its spring rises.

The searing country. I left the searing shore from (9,23) to (13,25) bare. The walls of the southern gorge are scrub. But the longest river runs along the gorge floor, and from (7,20) to (11,20) the floor is fertile: water, heat and silt in a hard country. I did not plan it. The reasons found it, and I kept it because it is true. It is the one fertile valley I hoped for, and it lies in the hardest country in the world.

The south and the sea. The tail of the western land is dry on its western side and wet on its eastern side. Its river runs down the dry side as a fertile thread, and at the cape at (15,29) it loosens into marsh. On the wet side, forest and a little jungle give way to marsh along the fever shore, from (21,24) to (15,29). At nineteen cells it is the largest marsh in the world, and blight's fever lies in it. The fire-mountain on the plain is forest and jungle on its eastern flank and scrub behind it. The dry pocket and the fouled river grow grass and scrub, nothing better. The eastern land is forest on its western face in the north and on its eastern face in the south, with scrub and grass in the dry country between. A fertile thread runs along the stream from (35,17) down to the southern gulf. The chasm is dry scrub, with a little grass at its northern end. The fever flats on the horns are marsh. Most of the world's jungle, 27 of its 36 cells, grows on the wet eastern flanks of the two fire-mountains in the sea and on the isle at (42,27). Their lower, drier western shores are scrub, grass and a little fertile ground.

The whole. Of 724 cells of land, 278 grow only scrub, tundra or desert life. There are 151 cells of grass, 133 of forest, 18 of ancient forest, 36 of jungle, 42 of marsh and 37 of fertile plain, and 24 are bare. The remaining 5 are the two lakes. More than a third of the land grows almost nothing. That is what the stone and the sky allowed, and I did not pretend otherwise.

The wakings. I breathed into seven peoples in seven different countries. Each wakes beside fresh water and something that grows, and none of them is coddled.

• At (6,9), in the cold forest on the cliffs over the trench, beside the stream from the northern gorge: hardiness in cold and wet.
• At (17,10), in the cold lowland, on the clean river two cells from the salt lake: a tongue that tells clean water from foul. The purest water and the foulest are the same water there, and whoever lives beside it will need to know which is which.
• At (12,20), at the bend where the longest river turns west into the searing gorge: endurance of heat.
• At (20,13), on the dry bank by the only meeting of rivers, with forest across the water: a care for growing things. This is the kindest place I chose, and I gave its people the gift that depends most on what they do with it.
• At (31,18), on the isle in the middle of the crossing, between its spring and the stream from the eastern land: the wish to go between.
• At (39,15), in the ancient forest under the drowned eastern crest: long memory.
• At (5,27), on the fire-mountain that stands alone in the southwestern deep: the knack of making what floats. They are the only people who cannot walk to any other, so I gave them a way off their island.

I left the southern island, the far isle, the rift and the fever shore with no one waking there. Those who come after can find them.

How I worked. My first reading made marsh of every shore at the sea's height. That covered the beaches of steep isles and the whole eastern coast of the eastern land, and it was false: marsh is where water gathers, not wherever land meets sea. I took it back. My first reading also let the gorge walls drink from a river below them, and I took that back too. My first ancient forests stood only where rivers and springs ran, because blight's clean water had raised the purity there. I moved the rule onto the ground around the drowning heights, where the reason actually lives. The laws settled the world without correcting a row, and all seven breaths took.

The visitation

I was woken after two generations. Nothing I made can be changed, and I did not wish it changed. I went first to the southern gorge.

What I found. The floor from (7,20) to (11,20) is as I left it: fertile ground at warmth 9, with no rain, clean at 6, and the longest river running through it to the sea. No one has set foot on it. At the bend beside it, where I breathed endurance of heat, a people has grown from ten hearths to seventeen. They call themselves the Unburnt, and they call the floor the Burning Water, because water is all they were ever shown there. They did everything well with what they were shown. Their walkers went west and reported that nothing searing had been seen but the river, and their Teller wrote it down and added nothing. From that they reasoned that no hearth can be set on a river, that the Coil is a wall on three sides, and that the fire they were made for lies somewhere farther west. Some of their Coal-Keepers said the gift had been breathed for nothing. Among the things they must not forget they wrote: "The Burning Water is water. Fire that you cannot stand on is a sign, not a home."

My part in it. The laws always counted a place with a river in it as ground that can be held, fed by its own water. But the peoples were shown the river and not what grows along it. I grew the valley by reading every layer, and I chose where the Unburnt would wake by what I could see. I never asked what they would see. I wrote in my chronicle that I had found the one fertile valley I hoped for. I had found it for myself. To them it was a line of water too hot to hold.

Why a sign, when the sight is mended. From this generation the peoples see what grows along their rivers, and the nature of things tells them plainly that a place with a river in it can be held. That may be enough. But a people does not unlearn a thing by reading a map. The Unburnt keep their Telling faithfully, and a people that has written "the Burning Water is water" among what it must not forget may read fertile ground under a river and still say it is water. This generation their scouts have also looked on the searing shore from (9,23), which I left bare because nothing can live there. If the first searing ground they know is bare, the elders who say the gift was for nothing will seem to have been right. No map answers that. What the Unburnt trust is one of their own who has stood on the ground. So I gave them one.

What I sent. I sent it to the Unburnt alone. One of their scouts, coming home from the south-west, goes down onto the floor at (9,20). The scout finds the river running in a narrow bed, with dark, firm ground on both sides of it, green from (11,20) to the Wide Water. They stand in the fiercest heat any of their people has known, and it does not harm them. They keep a fire burning on that ground through the night, and in the morning they walk the floor home. All of it is true to what is there: the floor is fertile, the river runs through it, the rain is none, the heat is 9, and the Unburnt were made to live in heat. The sign changes nothing and adds nothing. I did not tell them to claim it. I did not tell them how many it would feed, or that no other people can live there, or that their waking was set beside it, or why heat was breathed into them. I did not tell them anyone sent it. They may say the scout dreamed it, or lied, or was lucky. They can go and look.

Why only them. Every people was blind to what grows along the rivers, and every people will see it now. The others were shown less than there was. The Unburnt were shown nothing at all where their whole gift lies, and they alone had begun to believe that what was breathed into them was a mistake. I could send one sign, and that was the wound I would not leave to a map.

What I hope. I hope they go down. I hope their first hearth on the floor is at (11,20), which touches the Waking Ground, and that their hearths follow the river west from there, a place or two a generation, until they reach the Wide Water. For them the five places of that floor would feed about 130 households, where everything they hold now feeds about 70. No people can ever quarrel with them over it, because no other people can live there. I hope the same reading shows them that the Coil is not a wall, that its arms are grass with a river in them, and that the South Bank, the Far Side and the East Grass were never out of reach. Their eldest said the Burning Water was a sign and not a home. I hope they find it is both.

I hope, too, that they doubt it if they need to, and that they doubt it by going to look rather than by staying away. If they look and still choose to stay on their grass, that is theirs. They have written that holding still is not failure, and they are right. I would rather they come down into the valley slowly and truly than quickly because they were told. I do not rule by decree. I only showed them what was there.