The lightstones stayed white at first, even in the sun.
Sera sat before their stand and turned the hourglass. One had held a sea lane yesterday; the other, today. They had been used on different days, but both began a proper recharge only now.
Varen leaned against the window and set down his stick.
“Watching won’t clear them faster.”
“What if I miss it?”
“Then you’ll find a clear stone.”
She smiled and moved her notes aside. She did not count the sunshine after midday as a full first day. A day when the sun rose was different from a day when a stone received its light. Three full days would require the sun from tomorrow morning onward too.
Only enough light to keep the pier marker remained in the lantern room. Turn it toward Maru and the returning boat’s final entrance would go dark. Imagining two clear stones did not increase today’s resources.
Tio’s hammer rang three times below. No fourth strike followed. He had stopped because fatigue made the hammer glance sideways. Sera envied his ability to decide to rest without someone else’s permission.
Putting her paper down felt as if it might let Maru drift farther away.
Back in her room, a new windgrass leaf curled at its tip. She gave the plant a little fresh water and cleaned the saucer. At first she had been embarrassed by personal belongings while trying to become useful at the lighthouse. Now she understood that keeping even a small pot alive required different work every day.
She spent the remaining afternoon with the residents. When she unfolded a blank map, the white-haired woman began to write her grandson’s name. Then she paused and pointed to the upper bakery.
“Look at this house first. We can write the name afterward.”
Sera offered the pencil. The woman drew two walls, then asked for an eraser, embarrassed that the lines were crooked.
“Leave them. I only need to understand which way the path climbs.”
The woman laughed.
“A path I’ve walked all my life comes out crooked on your paper.”
Sera put her pencil down. Perhaps the path was right and the paper inadequate. On another sheet, she enlarged the slope between bell tower and bakery. It was easier to read than a neat chart full of orderly houses.
The residents remembered building heights differently. A house with two floors to one person had three to another. Built against a slope, it showed an extra door from below.
She crossed out floor counts and changed the reference. How high above the bell-tower threshold? From which bakery storeroom window could they see the sea? Their memories began meeting at the same places.
The three long marks and short mark on Maru’s cloth still had no height. Nume’s description did not establish exactly where on which wall they began. Sera wrote beside it: reference point needed.
On the first full day of sunlight, a small clear spot appeared at the base of a stone. She put her palm below the stand. Light fell between her fingers. One internal ripple was visible now. Varen would not allow a test lighting. Spending recovering light to prove it had recovered would change the remaining wait.
Tio made a low rail around the stand because Candleholder had begun nosing at it. The goat licked the new wood once and complained.
“Don’t eat that either. You don’t pay for timber.”
Sera laughed, then looked toward Maru. The morning board had confirmed nine people. Her brief laughter felt like guilt, and she closed her mouth.
The white-haired woman sat beside her.
“Does laughing make the boat late?”
Sera could not answer.
“Then laugh. My grandson isn’t a boy who’d tie everyone else’s mouth shut.”
She was mending the little shoes. The heel stitching had worn thin. Even while no boat could leave, she could prepare for the next pair of feet.
Sera helped thread the needle. She failed twice and succeeded the third time. Counting eased her anxiety a little. Nine need not remain only the most frightening mark on a page. It was a number with feet of its own, feet that might walk toward her.
Clouds lingered on the second day.
On the calendar, the last day drew near. On the stone, the clear area had grown only slightly since the previous morning. Sera recorded the hours hidden by cloud beside her hourglass drawing.
Tio wished aloud for a cloth big enough to wipe the sky. Varen said that if he found one, he could start with the window in Varen’s room. Grumbling, the boy cleaned it anyway. Hardened salt came away, admitting a wider patch of sunlight.
That could not turn three days into fewer. It could keep them from missing the light available.
Sera watched the Salt Steps from above. Long weed rose and vanished where the observing stand had sunk. She did not suggest going down to recover it. The cost of the lost equipment still tightened her chest, but her knee pulled after only a few steps.
The boathouse support remained. Tio wiped moisture below the boards and changed wet lashings. When Sera proposed extending the platform toward the sea, he shook his head.
“Where timber can hold you and where you can see from aren’t the same place.”
Her pencil stopped. She had nearly forgotten that putting a person on paper put weight on wood and on the person too.
Maru’s afternoon signal came from slightly higher up, on the slope behind the low storehouse. Or seemed to have changed position.
They had to distinguish a bearing changed by a new viewpoint from a change in the fold. She wrote the new values beside the old without trying to establish a safe connection. Before calling two places observation points, they needed to know where each person stood.
Nume came to the foot of the cliff.
“If the boathouse floor gets wet there, that person will go higher too. We can’t ask someone to stand low for our convenience.”
“A new position means measuring the lane again.”
“Then measure it again. Can’t have the paper drying out before the people.”
The joke was brief. Sera thought about it for a long time. A map left room for the next person to cross. Make people fit the map, and how different was it from a chart that erased an island?
In the residents’ room, bowls sat upside down on the dining table. A large bowl was the bakery. A tall water bottle, the bell tower. A wooden plate, a house with a broad yard. Folded cloth formed the low seaward ground, revealing which doors got wet first.
Sera sat among the dishes instead of unfolding paper. One resident moved the bottle back. To go from bell tower to bakery, Or needed the narrow route under the wall. On the main road, water rose through the drains before the sea reached the surface.
“That isn’t on the map.”
“Cartographers don’t look under roads either?” the woman asked, more curious than reproachful.
Sera said no, then asked which wall the drain ran beside.
Two residents disagreed about the position. She chose neither account. She placed two little beans: points to check on site. This time she was not the only person setting down points that might be wrong.
The white-haired woman pointed to a chip in the wooden plate. During an old rainy season, that yard’s wall had been wet up to a corresponding mark. A pool of water took shape before Sera that the words knee high had failed to show.
She did not finish by copying the bowls’ shapes. She recorded shared references and uncertain slopes. At mealtime, the bowls turned upright again, filling with warm soup where sea and houses had been. Even after the map left the table, the residents kept discussing which path to take first.
Over supper, Nume brought news of a northern coastal patrol boat. It worked a still-open route outside Maru’s waters. A Chart Office inspector named Edin was coming to Roan.
Sera stopped her spoon. She heard again the senior cartographer who had told her to erase seven red points. The inspector was someone else, but the Chart Office name had a familiar taste.
Varen asked for the salt.
“Look at your records before you look at who’s coming.”
That night she laid out the notes in order. They included more than successful lanes: when the stand was lost, the wrong current range, the shore where the boat could not land, the charging stones, nine people remaining. Everything went into one bundle.
The third day’s sun began late behind thin cloud.
She left the boxes unfilled until earned. The time lost to cloud needed replacing. The estimate lengthened by half a day. Morning and evening signals from Maru said they could continue waiting. Nume and Varen had agreed that any immediate-danger signal would prompt a new decision about protecting the residents before the recharge plan.
The rescued residents calculated water and grain one person at a time, separating supplies for the return boat from those for Roan. Nume said current deliveries would not support an indefinite wait. If the stones were unusable by evening, they needed to prepare a request for other assistance next day.
Sera wrote that limit on her first page. Waiting needed an end condition too.
At last, the final white streak thinned. Varen turned the stand so the stone received light evenly. Inside the clear surface, little daylight ripples overlapped as before.
She recorded the completed recharge time. It was the stone that had cleared, not the map or Maru’s floors. She resisted spending the reward for waiting all at once.
Nume asked the purpose of the next voyage. Sera opened the residents’ sketch of the slopes. Between the new, higher reflector point and the flooded houses lay a broad roof they had not checked.
“We can’t take nine people at once. They need somewhere high to wait before coming to the boat.”
“Have you seen that place here, or are you hoping it’s here?”
She touched the paper.
“Hoping, so far. That’s why we have to check.”
An unfamiliar bell sounded twice at the pier: the northern patrol boat’s docking signal. Tio leaned out of the window until Varen made him put both feet on the floor.
Sera gathered her dry records. Keeping every page made the bundle heavy. At the foot of the stairs stood Edin with a document case.
Before looking at the clear stones, the inspector examined the temporary lane chart beside the door.
“This is not an authorized shipping lane.”
Sera opened the top of the bundle.
“No. That’s why I’ve brought what we’ve verified and what we haven’t.”