THE LIBRARY · THE VALE

A Leaf From the Downcome Diary

A single page in the fine, over-precise hand of a Vyr who came down generations ago — kept, copied, and half-understood by their descendants. It grieves a thing it will not name, and it says, twice, that they did not mean to draw so deep.

[loose leaf, Vyr hand, folded into a Far College primer; ink faded, the fold worn to a tear] …my grandmother would not speak of the years above, and now I understand it was not silence but a held breath. She said only this, once, when the wine had gone round: that we did not mean to draw so deep. That the engine was meant to lift us and lend to him both, that no one on the high scaffolds believed a maker could be spent like a mine, and that by the time the drawing showed on him it could not be stopped without dropping the cities out of the air with every soul in them. So they did not stop it. She said we did not mean to draw so deep as though it were a prayer, or the only part of a prayer she could still say. I have written it down because no one else will, and because I am afraid that when she is gone the not-meaning will go with her and only the deep-drawn thing will remain, down here, getting worse. If you are reading this and you are of the blood, you know already. If you are not — then I am only another sky-fool with a sad old song, and you may put the leaf down and think no more of it. That is, I have found, the safest thing for everyone. It is even, most days, what I do.

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