Left In

The Sogmarsh Year — across the realm, in the Long. Being one evening of the year's longest, and four children who never met and were, by dark, exactly the same.

There is an evening in the Long — no two towns agree which, and every town is certain it is theirs alone — when the light will not go down, and the water lies as low as the year ever lets it, and the children of the realm go out to play Left In. No grown soul arranges it. No grown soul will admit it happens. And every grown soul once played it, and remembers, and on that one evening finds some reason to be standing near the bad place with their back turned.

The game is this. You count each other out, one by one, and the one Left In must Fetch. To be counted out is to be let off. To be Left In is to be chosen — the one the others trust to go and dare the thing, and to be watched while they do it. The rest keep the watch, and count you across, and you are safe for exactly as long as they are counting. That is the whole game. The whole of it is true. And not one of the grown ones will say so.

At Drudgeford they play it on the ferry-hard, where the Sog runs quick at the crossing and the ferry is away on the far bank. They stand in a ring and Wren says the words, touching each chest in turn.

Mud and mire, cup and fire, one to stay and one to tire, who's for the dark and who's for the door — and OUT goes the tab that you can't pay.

Round it goes, and out they go, and — as somehow it always is — Wren is Left In. The others have never worked out that she arranges it so, counting a beat quick or a beat slow, because Wren, who keeps everyone's secrets under a loose board she thinks is hers alone, wants the Fetch; being chosen is the one thing the street's cleverest child cannot simply arrange to be given. So she goes: down the mud, into the cold pull of the Sog, out to touch the far ferry-post and back before the ferry comes over. And on the bank her watchers count her across — one length, two length, three length gone — and the current takes her a yard downstream and the count catches in four throats and does not stop, four length, four length still, and she finds the post, and turns, and they haul the words along with her — and home, and home, and we've got you — and she comes up the mud with a splinter of the far post in her fist for the board with the buttons and the keys that fit no lock. And along the bank old Billy Saltaway mends a net that had nothing wrong with it, his back to the water, his lips moving, counting.

At Saltgate they play it on the tide-rock, bare only at the year's lowest ebb, and the words end their own way.

— and OUT goes the bell that you're not on.

Sprat is Left In, the quick watchful boy from over the store, and Sprat's whole religion is home before the seventh bell. Out he goes across the wet stones to the rock while the tide lies flat and false, and his watchers count him the only way the coast counts anything — the bell-tally off the tower — five bell… six bell… and on the sixth the tide remembers itself and turns, and comes, and the count does not waver, six bell still, six bell holding, and he has the limpet off the rock and he is coming, splashing, the water at his shins then his knees, and they reel him in on the shared line — and home, and home, and we've got you — up the slip before the seventh, the shell for the eaves with the sea-glass and the coin from a place that cannot be reached. And on the quay Nan Sackett reads tomorrow's weather off knees that need no reading tonight, her back to the sea, counting.

In the Drownings they play it out to the drowned chapel, where the bell tolls its wrong hour over the water, and the tail names the dread.

— and OUT goes the stilt that you're stood under.

Dib is Left In, and Dab at his shoulder as ever, and Dib takes the little boat and poles out through the low warm flood to the chapel to bring back a scraping of its stone. His watchers count him in poles — and pole, and pole, and pole — each thrust a heartbeat kept for him, and out at the chapel a gable shifts and a slab goes down into the black with a sound like a swallowed bell, and the count holds its nerve, and pole, and pole, and steady, and he has his scraping and he comes, and the words draw him home across the flood — and home, and home, and we've got you — the chapel-stone for the rafters with the bottle and the bone and the tide's other gifts. And on the half-deck Ma Skeel wrings a cloth that is already wrung, not watching the water, watching it, counting.

At Bogmoor they play it at the green bog, where the greenest ground is the treacherousest, and the words end where the ground can end you.

— and OUT goes the one that the bog took under.

Sorrel Muckle is Left In, muddy to the eyebrows and glad of it, and she goes out across the sunk stepping-stones to the one dry hummock for an egg off the nest — and Sorrel knows every stone in that bog by heart, including the three that have gone under, and her watchers count her the Bogmoor way, naming each stone before her foot finds it — stone that's there, stone that's there, stone that's — and the word that comes next is not there but gone, shouted, because the light has fooled her and her foot is going down toward the sunk one — and she hears the count, and trusts it over her own eye the way the whole realm trusts the post over the clock, and she takes the long stride instead, to the true stone, and on to the hummock, and back with the egg whole in her cheek for safety — and home, and home, and we've got you — to the hollow hedge with the fox's tooth and the blown eggs of other years. And by the green Bett Muckle shells a bowl of peas she shelled an hour since, her back to the bog, counting under her breath.

Four children, in four towns, on the one evening of the year the light would not go down. The Sog child never knew the coast child. The coast child never knew the boy on the flood. Not one of the four could have found the others' towns on the Committee's own map, nor would have believed, being told, that anywhere else was quite so much the middle of the world as home.

They played the same game to the same tune. They kept the same kind of hoard in the same kind of secret place. They each went out and dared the one thing their own ground could kill them with, and each came home only because someone stood in the dusk and counted them across and would not, for anything, stop counting — and each of them lay down that night muddy and triumphant and a year further into being of their place, certain they had done a thing entirely and only their own.

They had done the very same thing. They were, that evening, exactly the same. That is the realm; that is the whole of it. And the four of them will grow, and mend the nets and pole the boats and shell the peas and keep the tabs, and stand one evening in the Long with their own backs turned near their own bad places, counting under their breath for children they will never admit are playing — and never once, to the end of their days, say why.