The first thing they needed to draw a new lane wasn’t a pencil.
It was boots.
Sera looked down at the pair Tio had given her. They were a good two finger-widths larger than her shoes. Her heels lifted inside them when she tried them on.
“Am I going into the sea in these?”
“Near it. We’re trying to avoid the going-in part.”
He stuffed cloth inside. This time her feet and the boots moved together. Old salt smelled from the drainage holes in the soles.
Varen took an old observing stand from the wall.
“The Salt Steps don’t stay exposed long. Today, forty turns of the sandglass.”
“So we come back before that?”
“The water won’t wait for you to finish coming back. At thirty, leave the equipment. By thirty-five, I want the people home.”
She nodded before she meant to. Suddenly the numbers were lengths of life rather than time.
Varen would observe Maru Island from the lantern room. Sera would watch the same island from the Salt Steps beneath the cliff. They would establish its bearing from two separate points, then link an observation to Maru’s answering signal. If it worked, a lane would open wide enough for the rescue boat. If it didn’t, one stone would cloud over and the day would be gone.
Varen didn’t conceal the possibility of failure.
“If I go down, getting back up takes too long. You have to go.”
The iron stand was heavy in Sera’s arms.
“Tio goes with you.”
The boy’s face tightened.
“Only as far as the steps.”
“I’m not putting you on a boat.”
Only then did Tio nod. He collected his hammer and rope. Nume was already aboard, preparing the sail. The boat had to leave as soon as the light caught the passage.
At the end of the pier, the captain broke a ship’s biscuit in half and ate it. Blankets and water barrels had been loaded. Nume held up one of the empty blankets.
“There’s a limit to how many I can carry. Don’t widen the lane because someone gets left behind. I decide what the boat can take.”
Sera nodded. Charts and boats bore different weights.
Past the pier, around the eastern face of the cliff, the wind changed. Salt that the lighthouse had sheltered her from struck her face. She tied the cover over her papers tight.
Black steps lay exposed below the receding sea. She couldn’t tell whether people or water had cut them. White salt flowered on the stone. The final ledge was still submerged.
Tio went first and secured a rope.
“Stay inside this. The stone’s slippery beyond it.”
“Have you been down before?”
“As far as the sixth ledge.”
“And today?”
“Eighth.” He gave a short laugh. “Don’t look pleased just because the number’s bigger.”
Small lights glowed in the cracks. Sera thought they were blue moss until she saw crabs no larger than her fingernails, light tucked beneath their shells. Each passing wave darkened them together. When the water drained, they lit again.
She bent without thinking. Tio caught her shoulder.
“Don’t turn your back. You won’t see the water coming.”
She straightened. Even looking at beautiful things had its proper order. The crabs scattered at her feet. One clung to a bootlace until a saltwing’s shadow passed, then hid in a crack.
She took the ledges one by one, toes gripping inside her boots. Each wave brushed below her knees and withdrew as though it would take the stone she stood on with it.
From the eighth ledge, she could see the lighthouse window.
Varen moved a small mirror. One flash.
ARRIVAL ACKNOWLEDGED.
Tio secured the instrument. Sera set out the sandglass. The first run began.
Maru lay behind fog. Down here she couldn’t see the rocks she had watched from the tower, only the edge of the coastal trees. They needed the same target. If she sighted a different tree and made the numbers match, she would draw the wrong lane with perfect precision.
She searched for the bell tower.
A roof appeared and vanished between the waves, bright as glazed tiles. Her textbook described an emergency bell tower fitted with a reflector.
She turned the stand toward it.
One full turn of the handle, and the target moved the opposite way.
She lifted her eye. Tio was looking out to sea too.
“The island moved just then, didn’t it?”
“That’s what it looks like.”
More precisely, the distance to the island was folding. Rocks drew near and pulled away. A bird perched on one abruptly grew to the size of her palm, then shrank to a dot.
She wrote three readings. None agreed.
A checking flash came from the lighthouse.
She couldn’t answer it.
Sand fell.
Second turn.
Third.
She checked the stand’s level. Its feet held fast to rock. No damp wooden frame to swell beneath it. Wondering whether her hands were shaking, she let Tio hold the handle for a moment.
The island moved for him too.
“So it isn’t me,” she murmured.
“Is that good?”
“No. If the instrument was wrong, I could fix it.”
He didn’t laugh.
She needed a number to send Varen. Could she average them? Her pencil rose, then stopped. If she invented a middle value that existed nowhere, where would the boat go?
She touched the eraser in her pocket. At the Chart Office she had been taught to revert to the standard value in such cases. That value dated from before Maru’s lane was withdrawn. Use it now and her chart would be tidy, while the sea beneath Nume’s boat stayed unstable.
She reversed the pencil in her hand, then turned it back.
“If I take too long, go up without me.”
Tio shook his head.
“I can’t read the instrument. If you don’t come back, what am I supposed to show him?”
He pointed to the lighthouse window. This wasn’t an exam Sera had to answer alone. The thought slowed her hands a little and made them a little more precise.
She stopped trying to choose a number.
She wrote them in sequence instead: when the island drew nearer, when it receded, when the bell rang. She filled lines until her wrist ached.
On the sixth run of sand, the bell sounded across the water.
Her pencil stopped.
While the bell rang, the roof held still. Not for long. When the last resonance faded, the roof began shifting again.
She waited for the next signal.
Once. A pause. Twice.
During the second long note, she read the scale. Close to the value from the earlier pause. A small difference, within tolerance.
“Tio. Pull this cord while the bell’s ringing.”
“The rope?”
“No. The cloth over the mirror.”
She aimed the signaling mirror beside the stand toward the lighthouse. Each time Maru’s bell rang, they uncovered it. The flashes lasted as long as the notes.
On the third repetition, the lighthouse light followed the rhythm.
Varen understood.
Only then did Sera breathe out. A precise explanation could wait. For now, someone far away could choose the same moment.
A clear circle grew above the lantern room. The folded band of sea eased a little. The bobbing roof stayed in place for a moment.
Sera recorded the new bearing and held up a board toward the tower. Tio had prepared large number boards; writing on a small sheet couldn’t be read at that distance.
One acknowledgment flash.
At the next bell, she measured again.
The two observations agreed.
A narrow lane opened across the sea.
It wasn’t the straight line in the textbook. It curved at length around the low waves, glittering as though thousands of silver scales had been fitted together.
Two saltwings glided along it.
Neither was thrown aside.
“It’s open,” Tio whispered.
There was no time to be glad. A dark shape turned halfway along the lane. From above, it might have looked like a rock’s shadow. From down here, Sera could see water being pulled into a circle.
A dangerous current.
She raised the triangle board.
Nume was watching from the pier and lifted a hand in answer. The boat’s bow slowly turned.
Sera marked the lane’s right edge in red. The safe width beside the current wasn’t enough for two boats abreast. One wide turn could block the way home.
Two quick flashes from Varen.
PREPARE TO WITHDRAW.
She looked at the sandglass. Twenty-eighth turn. Tio had been turning it while she worked. Water covered his ankles.
“Seventh ledge is under,” he said, his voice rising.
She wrote the final reading and tried to free the instrument. The wet knot had tightened solid. Tio took a small knife to it, but the blade wouldn’t bite properly.
Thirty.
Time to leave the equipment.
She couldn’t let go of the stand. Chart Office property. Worth more than three months of her wages. How would she explain losing it?
A wave covered the ledge.
Tio gripped her arm.
“He said he wanted the people back.”
She released the handle.
Pencil and papers went inside her coat. She took the rope Tio offered. Water rose to her thighs. She felt for the next ledge with her toe.
Nothing.
The stone ended a foot ahead. She had stepped wrong.
As her boot slipped, Tio hauled on the rope. Her knee struck rock. Cold water poured into the boot. It hurt, but her foot was on stone again.
They crawled up the steps.
The last time she looked back, the observing stand glimmered underwater. A saltwing circled above it. The equipment was beyond saving. The paper with the lane on it was against her chest.
Nume’s boat was already leaving the pier.
The captain raised a hand toward her.
“Way back?”
“No wide turns to the left! There’s a current!”
“Lead with the important part!”
Nume sounded angry, but the boat was already heading into the narrow side she had marked.
Sera dragged her wet self up to the lighthouse.
Varen didn’t scold her when she said the stand was gone. He took her record first and carefully spread its damp corners.
“Feet?”
“Still have both.”
“Then you made a good return.”
She nearly cried. Not because he had praised her for losing something expensive. Because it was strange to be somewhere she was allowed to come back before the equipment did.
But the boat beyond the window had not come back yet.
She pressed close to the lantern-room glass. Nume followed the silver lane. It had narrowed since the moment the bell tower’s roof held still. Varen turned the lightstone a fraction to adjust the angle.
The stone’s lower edge clouded to milk.
Its stored light was dwindling.
Sera searched for the glimmer from Maru. Someone there had to watch the boat at the matching time to keep the passage fixed. A bright circle flashed once, then twice.
The third flash never came.
Varen leaned forward.
A bell rang, short and fast. A rhythm from the old emergency signal tables.
UNABLE TO MAINTAIN LIGHT.
Maru’s roof sank from view into the fog.
The boat was already halfway across the sea.