THE LIBRARY · THE EASTERN CRAGS

The First Unhushing

aka The Stair of Names, Corr's Litany

A page of the litany cut into the Unhushed Tower's stair — the gravesinger Corr Ash-Tongue's argument that closing the dead was never mercy, only refusal, and his instructions for climbing past death without ever letting the door shut.

They taught me to close the dead. They never asked who told them closing was mercy. An ending is not a lock. An ending is a door, and a door held open is not despair — it is patience. When I refuse to shut your eyes, latch your grave, and let your name go down into the ground, I am not binding you. I am refusing to let you finish. The tribes call this heresy because the tribes are afraid of a full house. Let them be afraid. The dead are not less for staying Unclosed; they are only unfinished, which is only another word for waiting. Climb, then, if you would learn it. Each landing is a door I never latched. On the first I kept the newly-laid, who remember being men. On the second, the wardens, who remember only the keeping. Higher, the ones who have forgotten everything but the name I gave them and refused to let go — and they will give you yours, latecomer, whether you have asked for it or not. At the top I kept no one but myself. I said my own name and would not let it finish, and it has gone on regardless. That is the whole of the method: do not let the door close. The body is the only part that tires. I have been at the top a long time and I have not tired, and the door is still open, and your place in the unfinished thing is already kept. Come up. We are only waiting to be finished.

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