Baby Joan took her first steps on an ordinary spring morning, and the whole valley seemed to hear about it within the hour, which struck Thomas, arriving at Diccon and Elsbeth's small house to see for himself, as exactly the kind of news a town like this one was built to celebrate properly.
She was nearly a year old now, sturdy and fierce-tempered in a way that made Aldith declare, with evident satisfaction, that she'd inherited her namesake's stubbornness along with her name. She stood wobbling at the doorway when Thomas arrived, one small fist gripping Elsbeth's skirt, before releasing her hold entirely and taking three lurching, triumphant steps across the packed earth floor before landing, with a startled squawk, on her well-padded backside.
The whole small gathering — Diccon, Elsbeth, Aldith, Wat, who had somehow already installed himself as a permanent fixture of the household despite no official claim to the position beyond his godfather's title — erupted into the particular delighted applause reserved for exactly this kind of small, enormous milestone.
"She'll be running before the summer's out," Wat predicted, scooping the indignant, squirming child up before she could properly protest the interruption. "Mark my words. This one's not built for crawling much longer."
Thomas watched the scene with a warmth that reached, gently, past even the heavy shadow of the past week's discoveries — a sister he still couldn't remember, a world quietly reshaping itself in ways he couldn't fully track, all of it receding, for the length of this one small triumphant morning, behind the plain, uncomplicated joy of a child's first steps.
"You look like you needed this," Victoria said quietly, arriving at his side, her own eyes soft watching little Joan attempt, with fierce determination, a second try at the same triumphant crossing.
"I did. I don't think I realized how badly until just now." Thomas took her hand, watching Joan make it four full steps this time before Wat caught her, laughing, before the inevitable fall. "I keep thinking about everything we don't understand — the anchor, the memories, whatever's happening to the world I left. I forget, some days, that the valley keeps living regardless. That children keep taking their first steps, and weddings keep happening, and ordinary mornings keep arriving full of small, uncomplicated joy, whether or not I've solved a single one of the larger mysteries hanging over all of it."
"That's rather the whole point, isn't it? The lesson Hamo gave you, all those months ago. Build the days." Victoria squeezed his hand. "I don't think this is a distraction from the larger fears, Thomas. I think it's the actual answer to them, as much of an answer as either of us is ever likely to get. Whatever happens to you, whatever's happening to the world you left, this valley will keep having mornings exactly like this one. Children will keep learning to walk. People will keep falling in love and building homes and choosing, every single day, to keep living fully despite every uncertain thing hanging over them."
Diccon, catching Joan as she made a fourth, more confident attempt, looked up at them both with the particular unguarded joy of new parenthood, still fresh enough not to have worn into ordinary routine. "She's going to grow up never knowing anything but this," he said. "The towers, the rail line, the whole valley just — thriving, the way it does now. I used to think that was something I helped build. Watching her take those steps just now, I think I finally understand it's something considerably larger than any of us built alone."
Thomas found himself, standing in the small, crowded, joyful house, thinking that Diccon had put into simple, honest words exactly the truth he'd been circling all week without quite landing on it himself — that whatever the falling number, the widening plague, and the reshaping world eventually cost any of them individually, the valley itself had become something that no longer depended on any single person's survival to keep thriving, keep growing, keep welcoming each new small, triumphant step into its stubborn, hard-won peace.
He stayed the whole afternoon, longer than he'd originally planned, simply watching a child learn to walk and a town celebrate the plain, ordinary miracle of it, and found, by the time he finally walked home with Victoria beneath a warm spring sky, that some small, essential part of the week's heavy dread had finally, genuinely lifted.