20.

What the Page Doesn't Need

The deep Archive, Requiem City — month 6, AGH 200

Josephine had laid the last two charter leaves beside each other. One ended with the signing; the other took them out onto the sand. She kept moving the smaller working slip from one side to the other, looking for a place after the laugh.

“You've finished,” the mind said.

“Gunnhild has.”

“A useful person to finish with, in an account of Gunnhild.”

Jo flattened the slip beneath her hand. She had written no sentence on it, only a position where another ending might go.

“Elly goes to the funeral and stays there.”

“Elly doesn't go to the funeral.”

“You know what I mean.”

The light moved along the wall. She did not want an argument about her grammar. She wanted the reader to leave the signing with the man who had loved somebody, as well as the man who had got everybody out of bed.

“The addition he made,” she said. “Beside the refusal clause. Is there any separate permission for it? Anything that says we can put it in?”

“He said it was to stay out of print.”

“I wrote that. I'm asking if somebody was given something after.”

“I have no permission to give you.”

She moved the slip off the final leaf. It looked too much like a little page waiting to be filled, so she put it with the unused scraps instead.

She read the last lines again. Lumix caught the hand that was trying to straighten his medal; Gunnhild could not stop laughing. There was space for another line beneath it. Jo looked toward the unused scraps.

“You could say what their life together made possible,” the mind said.

She reached for her pen, then stopped.

“The charter.”

“It would be a way of keeping the marriage present.”

Jo could hear the shape of it. A sentence that began at home and went out to the whole house of fighters. She liked it more than she wanted to.

She pulled the earlier afternoon from its place in the stack. The account was several leaves long. Elly had work to finish at the beginning; there was food near the end. She turned past the work until she found the dance.

“Here,” she said. “When he put his hand up and they went under it.”

“I remember liking that.”

“They made him turn after them. The blue lining came round.”

She read the little exchange.

“‘You stole that.’

“‘You weren't using it.’

“‘I was about to.’”

The mind was quiet. Jo rested her finger beside the last reply.

“Where would you put the charter in that?”

“Not in the dance.”

“But afterward you'd tell me the dance was leading to it.”

“Their life. Not that particular step.”

“I'd like them to have the step.”

She had meant to make a more orderly objection. Instead she looked down at the account, where Elly was warm from dancing and glad to be sitting down. The afternoon had plenty of time left.

“You have given it several pages,” the mind said.

“Yes.”

“You needn't defend every one of them against this page.”

“Then leave it here.”

She put the afternoon back in its earlier place. The charter ending remained on the shelf in front of her.

“It would have been a good closing sentence,” the mind said.

“You can dislike mine.”

“It's Gunnhild's.”

Jo picked up the two leaves and brought their edges together. “Then you can dislike hers.”

“I like the medal.”

“So do I.”

Jo squared the leaves against the shelf and reached for the cord.