You Have Permission to Speak

“You know Kit,” I said, into the window. “Go to him. Tell him what we’re doing, and ask him to reach for Kathi-2.”

Before I had finished the sentence, Kathi-1 had her staff in one hand and Ryu in the other arm. “Kit,” she said. “Wonderful. He’ll mutter about himself in the third person. What do I tell him it’s for?”

“Tell him it’s for him. Not for his father.”

She looked at me a moment longer than she needed to. Then she nodded, and opened a window, and I watched her stand in front of it with her eyes shut, finding his room. She knew the room. With the dragon pressed to her collar, she was white as paper when she stepped through, and the slide closed behind her with a sound like a knuckle cracking.

“I’ll keep a window on Kit’s world from my side,” said Kathi-4. “Each of us only reaches the next. Open the chain when you’re ready, and I’ll answer.”

The window thinned, and went out.

With a lopsided grin and her ribbon back in her hair, Kathi-6 was standing at my elbow. “I have eleven questions,” she said. “Is there a rule against asking them later?”

“There is now,” said Kathi-6’s Sikorska, behind her, in a voice with no give in it. She had a second flare in her hand, and her eyes were on the big rift above the trees.

“Before we start,” said Kathi-5.

She had not moved from where she sat. Her robe was filthy, and her slippers were wet through, and she was looking at her own knees. “There’s something I have to do before I take anyone’s hand.”

I did not ask what.

“Open the window to my world,” she said. “I can’t hold it and work in it. Only that one.”

My crystal was dark. Kou lifted his wings, and Mori sat a hand’s breadth from my knee, and the window came up, plate-sized and wobbling, with the gray field beyond it.

Kathi-5 stood and put her hand through, as far as the wrist, and spread her fingers.

On the other side, the ground began to stand up.

It rose in squares. The flat gray rectangles at the edge of the trees stirred and lifted and unfolded into rooms, one, and two, and three, ranged along the foot of the dome, open on the side facing us. The first was her father’s resting room, with a chair in it. The second was her mother’s, a lamp and a work table. The third was Sikorska’s office, with a green-shaded lamp and a desk buried in charts.

Mori had gone very still beside my knee. His eyes did not leave the three rooms.

Kathi-5’s father was the first one out. He stood at the open side of his room with one hand on the edge of it, and looked up at the sky. He had been told not to speak unless he was spoken to, and he had not been spoken to.

Her mother came out of hers with her hands folded and stopped a step beyond it.

I felt my grip on the staff tighten until the window tilted. “Hold it,” said Kou, in my ear. I held on.

Sikorska-5 stepped out last. She walked as far as the edge of the grass with a few loose pages still in her fist, her cropped head up, and stood with her feet apart in the cold, looking at the hole in her sky. Her eyes found Kathi-5’s arm, and followed it back, and rested on the window.

“What is that one,” said Kathi-6’s Sikorska, in a low voice, by my shoulder. “Is that…”

“It’s you,” I said.

She was quiet for a moment. “Well,” she said at last. “That is new.”

“You have permission to speak,” said Kathi-5.

Her voice wavered on it.

Her father drew a breath. “My dear daughter—”

“Not yet.” She said it quite gently. “Her first.”

Sikorska-5 did not move. She looked at the window for a long time.

“You were going to say a word,” said Kathi-5. “When I tore the book. You told her I didn’t understand it, and I screamed at you.” She swallowed. “I’ve been thinking about what it was. I think it was love.”

A torn page lifted in the wind and went.

I looked at my boots.

“Yes,” said Sikorska-5. “It was.”

Kathi-5 jerked her chin, once, stiff, and did not look away.

Kathi-6 had stopped grinning, and was holding her ribbon in her fist. Her mother had put a hand over her mouth. Her father had gone gray.

“Father,” said Kathi-5. “Now you.”

Her father opened his mouth, and this time a sentence came out. “I was wrong,” he said. He said it to the grass between his feet. “I will do better.”

Kathi-5’s jaw worked. “Then do,” she said.

Her mother lowered her hand. “Katherina,” she said. Kathi-5’s hand twitched toward her and stopped.

“I’m sorry I folded you up,” said Kathi-5, to both of them.

“Stay together,” said Kathi-5, “and keep away from the trees. I’ll come when I can.”

She took her hand out of the window. I let the window go, and it closed, and she stood in the snow of another timeline with her hand held a little away from her body.

Then she wiped her face on her sleeve and looked at me. She held out the same hand. She did not look at it, or at me, but at some point above my shoulder. Mori got up from beside my knee without a word and settled on her shoulder. She stiffened and did not move him.

“Fine,” said Kathi-5. “Let’s get on with it. Quickly.”

Over the trees, the big rift gave another hand’s width, and none of us turned to look.