Days and nights go by. Moons swing up from the east in round, ripe glory and fade to mere slivers of rind on the western sky as time passes. Conjunctions come and go.
Comes a night. Dusk in Thou-ne, a misty dusk in which all is veiled, mystery made manifest, ghost faces in the wisps of fog that waft in from the River, ghost voices, too, which become, on long listening, the sounds of song-fish, wooden bells, the tinkle of glass chimes, the crier’s call. Only the Tower has a brazen bell, metal being too scarce to waste on anything except coin and holy purposes, but it is silent tonight, its voice withheld. Tower bell only rings when something is wrong. There is seldom anything wrong in Thou-ne, edged as it is on the east with the scarps and valleys of the Talons. No workers come to Thou-ne from the east. Potipur knows what the Awakeners beyond the Talons do with their dead, though Peasimy supposes a workers’ pit somewhere. Peasimy has it all figured out. Lies, all lies what they say. It was lies what they said about his father being Sorted Out. It was lies what the body fixer said about his arm, that time it broke. There hadn’t been any Sorters, and the arm had hurt, terribly. Peasimy no longer listens to what they say. Only what they do is true, so he watches but does not hear. He has turned his ears off, long and long ago, to most words. Sounds, now, those he will condescend to hear, and tonight he listens from his post beside the warehouse wall. Chimes and wood bells and the crier’s call.
4
Night along the River in Thou-ne. Mist, tonight, blowing in from the shipping surface, softly suffused globes of it gathered around each of the lanterns, holding the light in glowing spheres that hang along the jetties like a string of ghostly balloons. Song-fish making a chorus under the shore reeds, harummm, rumm, lummm, rumm. Three of them. One soprano-fish and two deep-voiced droners. Harumm, sloo, harumm.
Light cannot get far enough from the lanterns to make puddles on the cobbles. Lanterns are scarcely bright enough to see by. Jetties lying in shadow. He stands, Peasimy, head cocked, listening to the song-fish. Something there, disturbing them. Most nights they’ve finished up by now, danced on their tails, done all their calling and telling, but tonight there’s something keeping them awake. So Peasimy listens, almost understanding what it is the song-fish sing, as much in tune with them as with the dark and the fog.
“Oh,” he whispers to himself, “don’t I hear you, don’t I? Somethin’ comin’. Somethin’ wonderful comin’. Don’t I know that? Haven’t I been told? No need to keep sayin’ it, over and over. No matter was it tomorrow or forever, I’d still be here, waitin’ for it.” He rocks to and fro on his heels, thinking they may stop now, now that he’s told them, but the song-fish go on, harummm, harummm. No, whatever they’re telling him, it’s something different from the ordinary.
Peasimy tiptoes along to the Riverbank, out onto the jetty, down to the place the reed bed thins out and the fish sing, flings himself down with his head snaking out over the slosh and slurp of the black water.
Harumm, lumm, sloon, rumm. Fish playing with something, pushing it back and forth. They do that. Push an old barrel back and forth. Push a log, a stump. Chunk, chunk on the jetty, far down. Chunk, chunk, coming closer. And he can see it! Even in the dark, down there under the water, glowing, shining, a greeny glow, like new leaves in the sun, like moon on grass, light!
He stares and stares as the fish bring her up, up to the surface, she glowing ever more brightly, until at last he looks directly into her face. All around her die fishes, singing, the glowing fishes spread either side of her like wings. Bump, bumping her against the stones, looking up at Peasimy as though to say, “Here she is!” He knows her at once, one of the creatures from his dreams, one of those who bring the light.