On the forty-third day of the goblins' residence, Skrit stopped at the most critical junction in my middle passages and spoke to the air.
Skrit:
"Old Stone. Left is bad. Right is good. Yes?"
I warmed the right-hand wall. Her palm was flat against it; she felt the change immediately.
Skrit:
"Right."
She went right. Twenty minutes later she came back with three of her scouts - Prith, long-legged and skeptical; Vel (who was, I had recently discovered, two goblins sharing one name, which remained conceptually challenging for me); and a younger one whose name I was still learning.
Skrit:
"Put your hands here. Both of you."
Prith:
"On the wall."
Skrit:
"On the wall."
Prith touched the right-hand wall. I warmed it, the same degree, the same localised heat.
Prith:
"...Warm."Skrit"And the left."
Prith moved her hand to the left wall. I held it at ambient temperature - cool, neutral.
Prith:
"Cold."
Skrit:
"Warm means safe. Cold means ---"
Prith:
"Danger."
Skrit:
"Yes."
Vel (first):
"The cave is talking to us."
Vel (second):
"The cave is talking to Skrit. We're learning what it's saying."
Prith:
"Is there a difference?"
Skrit:
"Yes. Everyone in this clan learns to read it. We don't rely on one person to translate."
(Remembrance):
I stayed with that decision for a long time. She was right, and the rightness of it was also a kind of gift: she was not building a dependency on herself, but rather she was distributing the knowledge. That was not the decision of someone who seeks to have control over others. That was the decision of someone who wanted her people to be able to live without her if they had to.
I hadn't thought about what the loss of Skrit meant to the community. That day began to change my opinion.
The lessons that followed over the next couple of weeks were the most amazing experience I can remember since the first time I lit a torch. Skrit would bring two or three goblins together at a junction and teach them the warm-cold vocabulary before asking them questions to see how much they understood without having to wait for an answer from me.
"Old Stone! Is the human-smell passage safe today?"
Cold wall: no. (The eighth expedition had been through two days ago; the floor dust still held their boot-marks.)
Skrit:
"See? Cold. You don't go there."
Young Scout:
"What if I'm not near a wall?"
Skrit:
"Floor."
Young Scout:
"The floor talks too?"
Skrit:
"Everything talks. You just have to learn how to listen."
I sent a gentle vibration through the floor beneath the young scout's feet at that moment - a soft ripple, the frequency I had been developing for yes, exactly that. The scout yelped.
Young Scout:
"It. The floor..."
Grib (from nearby, having followed at a distance):
"That means yes. I figured that one out already."
Skrit:
"Grib. You were supposed to be doing inventory."
Grib:
"I was. Then I heard you teaching and I thought learning the cave was more important than counting mushrooms."
Skrit:
"The mushrooms need counting."
Grib:
"Old Stone knows how many mushrooms there are. I asked."
Skrit looked at the wall.
Skrit:
"Did he ask you about the mushrooms?"
I warmed the wall: yes.
Skrit (to Grib):
"And you understood the answer?"
Grib:
"Warm meant yes, there are enough, cold would have meant no. It's not complicated, Skrit."
Skrit:
"It is the most complicated thing I have ever learned."
Grib:
"Only because you learned it slowly. I learned it fast."
For a long time Skrit stared at him with that expression that I knew so well, the one that meant someone is thinking about something but chooses not to say it , and then she gestured for everyone to follow her back to the warm chamber.
This name came to be the way all of the good things come in life, when they aren't planned (or at least none of the ones that I knew about hadn't; i.e. the name DJ Krev).
Grib had made a habit of showing up at the lake to sit down next to it and talk out loud to himself, the water, the darkness, or anything else that would listen (which was always me). This evening was just another instance of what I had begun to call "Grib's Evening Monologue" - he would sit next to the lake and describe the events of the previous day, evaluate them and draw conclusions without being able to self-edit.
Grib:
"Skrit says you knew about the mushrooms. Did you plan that? The mushrooms in the lower chamber, did you put them there for us?"
I warmed the lake slightly. Yes.
Grib:
"Before we came? You made them before we came?"
I held the warmth - yes, though it was more complicated than that, I had been cultivating them with a different intention and redirected that intention. But the warm-yes was close enough to true.
Grib:
"So you keep things. Old things, new things. You hold on to them."
I warmed the lake a little more: yes, that is exactly it.
Grib:
"Skrit says you hold the old things in you. That you carry them carefully."
He trailed his hand in the water, thinking. Then, quietly, as if he were recognising something that had always been there:
Grib:
"Remembrance."
I warmed the entire lake. All of it, floor to surface, a gentle even heat rising from the deepest stone. Grib's hand went still in the water. Then he laughed; the pebble-in-water sound, his family's laugh, and looked up at the ceiling.
Grib:
"That's your name, isn't it? Remembrance. That's what you are."
The lake: warm.
Grib:
"Hello, Remembrance."
The lake stayed warm, and Grib lay back on the stone and stared at the dark ceiling until he fell asleep. I continued to keep the water around his hand warm. The name settled in me in the same way that names do when they are placed on something they have been waiting to have placed on it: as if returning home.