A1Everybody Has ItChapter I · PalatinesThe first thing that happens to them on this continent is a theft with no thief. Kyra hears a boy shout in the language that has been theirs alone for a hundred and three years.v0A1Everybody Has ItChapter I · PalatinesThe first thing that happens to them on this continent is a theft with no thief. Kyra hears a boy shout in the language that has been theirs alone for a hundred and three years.1·01It is a Small TownChapter I · PalatinesFour years and two months to get here, four of them in Lisbon that were nobody's plan.B1Ten ShipsChapter I · PalatinesNear three thousand German-speaking refugees came into New York that summer in ten ships. Four hundred and seventy died on the crossing or within a month. Two more foreign women with wrong accents are nothing at all in that.v0B1Ten ShipsChapter I · PalatinesNear three thousand German-speaking refugees came into New York that summer in ten ships. Four hundred and seventy died on the crossing or within a month. Two more foreign women with wrong accents are nothing at all in that.B2Backward, from Right to LeftChapter I · PalatinesYou hold the stick in the left hand. You take the letters out of the case without looking. You set them one at a time, backward, from right to left, upside down, and you space the line out until it is tight.v0B2Backward, from Right to LeftChapter I · PalatinesYou hold the stick in the left hand. You take the letters out of the case without looking. You set them one at a time, backward, from right to left, upside down, and you space the line out until it is tight.2·01The Harbor Was Full of GermansChapter I · PalatinesAnd English gets stolen off them on that wharf by a boy tying a rope.
A2The Warmest Object in This ProvinceChapter II · The South WallVal's hands are genuinely freezing and Kyra is the warmest thing in the room. The gesture is born here with a practical reason and recurs for four hundred years.v0A2The Warmest Object in This ProvinceChapter II · The South WallVal's hands are genuinely freezing and Kyra is the warmest thing in the room. The gesture is born here with a practical reason and recurs for four hundred years.v1A2The Warmest Object in This ProvinceChapter II · The South WallVal's hands are genuinely freezing and Kyra is the warmest thing in the room. The gesture is born here with a practical reason and recurs for four hundred years.1·02Nine DaysChapter II · The South WallShe had known since Lisbon and had said nothing. And underneath the true reasons was the part she got to on the seventh day, which was that she had liked having it — not enjoyed; held .A3Say the Rest of ItChapter II · The South WallVal cannot produce the words, so she asks to be told instead — and she can only ask with her face hidden against a shoulder. This is the book's baseline for what she can and cannot do.v0A3Say the Rest of ItChapter II · The South WallVal cannot produce the words, so she asks to be told instead — and she can only ask with her face hidden against a shoulder. This is the book's baseline for what she can and cannot do.
B3Five WeeksChapter III · ThankfulThe fever broke on the ninth day and the girl sat up and complained about the light. Val said out loud, to her father, with no hedge anywhere in the sentence, that she would live. She lived five more weeks.2·02There Are Newspapers There and None HereChapter III · ThankfulIt was not advice and was not meant kindly, and Val turned it over for a fortnight and found nothing wrong with any part of it.2·03He Did Not Ask Them AnythingChapter III · ThankfulShe noticed it with her whole body, because it was the third town in a row where the first hour had been questions.
1·03The Bowl Between Her KneesChapter IV · The Two DaysShe did not ask Val to stop. She did not stand between Vaelith Sorin and a thing Vaelith Sorin had decided she owed. This is what she had instead, every night for six weeks.A4What Happened in the Two DaysChapter IV · The Two DaysKyra asks the question and gets a paragraph Val wrote out in Venice and memorized. She asks for it a second time to test it, and it is identical.v0A4What Happened in the Two DaysChapter IV · The Two DaysKyra asks the question and gets a paragraph Val wrote out in Venice and memorized. She asks for it a second time to test it, and it is identical.1·04She Stopped Her in the Middle of itChapter IV · The Two DaysKyra declining to be thanked is the beat this book spends and never uses again. Render the hands stopped, the bowl still between her knees, and nothing said yet.B4A Sheet Comes Out on a MondayChapter IV · The Two DaysThree of his household are dead between October and December. He opens the shop in January because there is nothing else in the world for him to do at seven in the morning.v0B4A Sheet Comes Out on a MondayChapter IV · The Two DaysThree of his household are dead between October and December. He opens the shop in January because there is nothing else in the world for him to do at seven in the morning.2·04The Pest BoatChapter IV · The Two DaysShe went to the island in February, and did not ask anybody whether she should, and did not announce it. Kyra found out on the fourth day from a man at the ferry stairs.
2·05Nobody There Has a HistoryChapter V · Hannah SnowdenThe town was younger than either of them had been when they left the Vayr; there was nobody in it whose grandfather had been born there.2·06Moved Like Somebody Who Had a ListChapter V · Hannah SnowdenWent through a dead husband's books in a week, found out what he had been doing with the Assembly work, stopped, and was solvent inside two years.
2·07Half Past Two on a WednesdayChapter VI · GermantownShe had run cross-country for four years at the Vayr and had never once been able to explain to anybody what the last mile was for, and she found it again at thirty past two in the morning on Front Street.
B5Will ItChapter VII · Palatine BoorsKyra, carrying a wet mail bag with her mind on four other things, says the rain will break tomorrow after noon — and then hears herself. The postmaster is not suspicious. He is delighted, which is worse.v0B5Will ItChapter VII · Palatine BoorsKyra, carrying a wet mail bag with her mind on four other things, says the rain will break tomorrow after noon — and then hears herself. The postmaster is not suspicious. He is delighted, which is worse.2·08Will itChapter VII · Palatine BoorsFour seconds on a Thursday in April, and neither of them ever fully agreed afterward about how bad it was. Render him from behind or in three-quarter shadow — no likeness, no name.2·09Eleven Lines at the Bottom of a ColumnChapter VII · Palatine BoorsShe set it herself, one letter at a time, backward, from right to left, and spaced the last line out until it was tight. Then Kyra found her in the yard and did not ask anything.2·10She Stayed Until Val Was Ready to Go inChapter VII · Palatine BoorsThe two of them did not say one word about it then or on the water or afterward.
A5It Was Not Much to Look AtChapter VIII · Entry Thirty-OneThe comet has come back on the day a dead man said it would. They lie on their coats on the cold ground for an hour and do not talk about it.v0A5It Was Not Much to Look AtChapter VIII · Entry Thirty-OneThe comet has come back on the day a dead man said it would. They lie on their coats on the cold ground for an hour and do not talk about it.1·05She Looked SidewaysChapter VIII · Entry Thirty-OneNo contact. A comet that a dead man said would come back, on the day he said it would, and neither of them talks about it at all.A6It Was Not About a BodyChapter VIII · Entry Thirty-OneFifty-eight years after a boot room at nineteen, Val tells her the part she has never told her. She does it in pitch dark on purpose, so that she cannot be looked at while it happens.v0A6It Was Not About a BodyChapter VIII · Entry Thirty-OneFifty-eight years after a boot room at nineteen, Val tells her the part she has never told her. She does it in pitch dark on purpose, so that she cannot be looked at while it happens.
B6Fifty YearsChapter IX · Mercy TremaineEight years old in a house where three people died in nine weeks; married a cooper at nineteen; buried two children; died in her own bed at fifty. Val finds the stone after three weeks of looking and does the arithmetic standing in front of it.
B7Name. How Long. Before That.Chapter X · Second RoutesThree weeks after the thing in King Street. A lieutenant of twenty-four with a cold, sent because he had to come back with something, writing badly and slowly with his hand curled round the pencil against the damp.B8Then It Is Not a MessageChapter X · Second RoutesFour men talking about getting word out of a shut town, and a woman at the window with a proof in her hands who cannot stop herself saying the accurate thing. He takes it as an obvious remark from a customer and fetches her plate.2·11And HerChapter X · Second RoutesYou always hear boots in a press room; the floor is a drum.2·12He Wrote it Down BadlyChapter X · Second RoutesA name in a book, badly spelled, in the rain. The most dangerous thing in the chapter.
1·06I Did Not Ask YouChapter XI · The PassTwo hundred yards of water and entirely out of reach.A7Not Far NowChapter XI · The PassKyra's pass has come and Val's has not. They part on a public stair with a sergeant six feet away, and they are not permitted to touch.v0A7Not Far NowChapter XI · The PassKyra's pass has come and Val's has not. They part on a public stair with a sergeant six feet away, and they are not permitted to touch.B9A Town Writing Itself DownChapter XI · The PassYou give your name to the selectmen, who return the list to the town major, who writes the pass. Every person in that line came of their own accord and is waiting patiently to be written down, because being written down is the only way out.2·13The Town Shut on a WednesdayChapter XI · The PassOne road, a quarter of a mile long, with an army sitting on it. Everything else is water.2·14Until He Wrote it You Were Not Going AnywhereChapter XI · The PassThe machinery came out from behind the bargain one piece at a time, over about three weeks, the way machinery does.
A8In the Open, in the AfternoonChapter XII · The Outer HarborEleven months apart. Val has not lit once since June. She sees Kyra outside a chandler's and her throat lights up in daylight in a public street with soldiers forty feet away.v0A8In the Open, in the AfternoonChapter XII · The Outer HarborEleven months apart. Val has not lit once since June. She sees Kyra outside a chandler's and her throat lights up in daylight in a public street with soldiers forty feet away.B10Everybody in This Town Is Here for SomebodyChapter XII · The Outer HarborSixty-two years old, a press he worked thirty-one years, a town and a country gone, sitting on a box in the wet since before light with his hat on his knees. He has one question left and he spends it on her.B11Ten DaysChapter XII · The Outer HarborThe fleet sailed on the seventeenth and did not go. A hundred and twenty sail lay in the road below the castle for ten days, four miles off, visible from any hill in the town, with a man on one of them.2·15There Was a Fort That Had Not Been ThereChapter XII · The Outer HarborShe heard it from the street before she saw it: a particular kind of quiet that a garrison makes when every officer in it has gone up onto a roof.2·16Salt and Flour in the MudChapter XII · The Outer HarborA house being emptied by people who had been given no notice. A general's coach went into the harbor with the wheels still on it and was talked about for a hundred years.Alt2·17Wrong by the Length of a FortnightChapter XII · The Outer HarborA thousand people leaving their own town forever, in both directions along one wharf.
1·07Eleven MonthsChapter XIII · FunctioningThe light was still up under her throat. In the open, in the afternoon, in a street with soldiers in it, and Val had not once put her hand to her collar.1·08She Held on AnywayChapter XIII · FunctioningThat was how Kyra knew, and it took about nine seconds. Not you're alive . Not I did not know for four months . A book, and where it was, and why she had not burned it.A9I Have to Tell You About a BookChapter XIII · FunctioningThe first sentence out of her mouth after eleven months and a war is an administrative disclosure. Kyra puts both arms round her anyway, in front of all of them.v0A9I Have to Tell You About a BookChapter XIII · FunctioningThe first sentence out of her mouth after eleven months and a war is an administrative disclosure. Kyra puts both arms round her anyway, in front of all of them.1·09Four Hundred and Nine NamesChapter XIII · FunctioningNo contact. Begun in September, written in nearly every day since, and she should have burned it in December and did not.
1·10The Seam Came up PaleChapter XIV · A BearingThe concealment had held for a hundred and eighty-two years.1·11Inside the WallChapter XIV · A BearingNo contact. A hundred and eighty-one years, and nobody in that valley has ever heard of a woman who came out of the forest with a stick.1·12The Most Accurate Portrait Anybody Has Ever Made of MeChapter XIV · A BearingA hundred and eighty-one years in a locker, and it is still funny.1·13It is a BearingChapter XIV · A BearingNo contact. The most valuable object on this planet, and it is a direction. There is no distance in it and no route in it. It has had a hundred and eighty-one years, a broken hull, no crew and half its instruments, and this morning it finished.B12It Has Been Solving for Where It IsChapter XIV · A BearingA hundred and eighty-two years of concealment, held. The hull has been working out its own position since they walked out in 1608, and this morning it finished, and what it gives them is a direction with no distance in it.2·19A Frame in a FieldChapter XIV · A BearingNo face, no name, no likeness. An enormous wooden frame standing in a field, and a boy on a rope.2·20It Has Not Moved and it Will NotChapter XIV · A BearingEighty-nine years and four times the glass and it is the same object. I am extremely disappointed and it is not the relevant fact.
A10In EnglishChapter XV · In EnglishNineteen years after the wharf. Kyra has just told her the whole of the four months, and Val has come across the floor with nothing prepared, which she has not done in front of anybody since she was eighteen.v0A10In EnglishChapter XV · In EnglishNineteen years after the wharf. Kyra has just told her the whole of the four months, and Val has come across the floor with nothing prepared, which she has not done in front of anybody since she was eighteen.1·14Sit There and Don T Get upChapter XV · In EnglishIt takes about forty minutes and Val does not say one word in any of it.1·15Her Hands on the StoveChapter XV · In EnglishNo contact. She waited for about a minute and a half and did not fill it.1·16Nothing PreparedChapter XV · In EnglishThat was how she knew. Not the words — the words came after. For two hundred and forty-seven years Vaelith Sorin had arrived at every sentence that mattered having built it first.1·17In EnglishChapter XV · In EnglishThe most important line in the Earth books, and the room it happens in contains a half-folded shirt and a man hammering downstairs. Her hands are shaking, which Kyra has felt exactly twice in four hundred years.1·18Not Far Now to Nothing at AllChapter XV · In EnglishNinety-eight years after a wet valley road, and this is the first time either of them uses it for anything but distance. The stove ticks.2·18One Question LeftChapter XV · In EnglishHe asked her what she was there for, and she said there was work, and every word of it was true and she chose it because it was true, and he knew exactly what she had done.
A11The Hand Off the EdgeChapter XVI · DuskA settee arrives in part payment of a debt. Val sits on the floor in front of it because the firelight is better and the settee is the wrong height for writing. Kyra puts a hand down over the edge onto her shoulder without looking up.v6
B13Six Inches, in JuneChapter XVII · The Dry FogKyra has felt the field go wrong twenty times in two hundred and nine years and never once been able to prove it. In this one the sky is visibly wrong, and she cannot separate the two.2·21A Hayfield Under SnowChapter XVII · The Dry FogThere was a minute in which she looked at it the way anybody looked at it, which was as weather, and then the minute ended.2·22You Could Look Straight at itChapter XVII · The Dry FogIt did that from May until nearly October.2·23A Date Under the One That Said 1805Chapter XVII · The Dry FogA column of dates with nothing beside them. The eleven-year peaks, being logged for the second time.
2·24It Had Been DecidedChapter XVIII · OperativesThe oldest thing in it is the canal and the canal is five years old.2·25Four Hundred of Them and Not Looked at OnceChapter XVIII · OperativesShe had brought them to the one town on this world where the most remarkable-looking woman she had ever seen was invisible.2·26A Bell at Half Past FourChapter XVIII · OperativesThe arrangement, rendered as furniture.
B14The Counting House StepChapter XIX · LucyEight hundred women walk out over a wage cut, four abreast with their bonnets on, and somebody near the back is laughing. A girl of twenty gets up on a step and makes a speech that has the thing in it that cannot be taught.v2B14The Counting House StepChapter XIX · LucyEight hundred women walk out over a wage cut, four abreast with their bonnets on, and somebody near the back is laughing. A girl of twenty gets up on a step and makes a speech that has the thing in it that cannot be taught.2·27Four HoursChapter XIX · LucyLucy Bonney, seventeen, with a splinter of brass in the back of her hand and a way of looking at a room before she comes into it.2·28Nine of Them in That RoomChapter XIX · LucyThe best thing in the book, and all it is is a crowded kitchen.2·29Four Abreast with Their Bonnets onChapter XIX · LucyAbout eight hundred, and it did not hold.
A12She Left It OnChapter XX · How FarTwo hundred and thirty-one years of doing this in the dark, never once by agreement. Val decides on a Thursday, over a lost-dog notice, and carries it for three days under an ordinary face.v0A12She Left It OnChapter XX · How FarTwo hundred and thirty-one years of doing this in the dark, never once by agreement. Val decides on a Thursday, over a lost-dog notice, and carries it for three days under an ordinary face.1·19I Want to Leave it onChapter XX · How FarThree hundred and eight years old, two hundred and thirty-one of them lovers, and the single largest event of the book is a woman not turning down a wick. Kyra noticed the lamp at about the third minute and said nothing and was waiting.
1·20How Much FurtherChapter XXI · A Different OceanNo contact, and the closing image. Three hundred and fifteen years old, two thousand miles of continent in front of them, and eighteen years to a different ocean.B15West Out of BostonChapter XXI · A Different OceanTwenty-eight years since either of them said anything about the road. Two thousand miles of continent in front of them, and eighteen years to a different ocean, and a phrase that is always a lie.v2B15West Out of BostonChapter XXI · A Different OceanTwenty-eight years since either of them said anything about the road. Two thousand miles of continent in front of them, and eighteen years to a different ocean, and a phrase that is always a lie.2·30Not One of Them Looked upChapter XXI · A Different OceanEighteen years, and the town does not notice them leaving any more than it noticed them arriving.
