On the day she went to measure water, Sera packed dry socks before paper.
The pouch Tio handed her held socks and two small wooden wedges. The wedges were for a shifting survey board, not the boat. He would remain beside Roan’s support again.
“Tell the captain as soon as you feel sick. Pretending makes it last longer.”
“You sound experienced.”
“Experienced at getting it wrong.”
She tucked the pouch inside her clothes. Cloth wrapped her knee, which bent better now. Improvement did not make it hers to use without limit. She boarded holding the rail Nume steadied.
Small water containers, a survey board, and supplies went aboard. Space remained for possible passengers. Nume did not fill it with empty barrels. But the captain would carry no one across on their back until waves and the boarding slope allowed it.
Varen took the lantern room, Edin the fixed support in the low boathouse. They would check the boat’s black sail marker at matching times. Tio handled the large signal board. Before departure, they realigned with Or’s high reflector position on Maru.
Only after reading through that sequence did Sera unfold her chart aboard. Her crossing must not leave an observation point empty.
One clear stone lit in the lantern room. The other stayed in its box. Being able to fix a lane today did not promise unrestricted departures tomorrow.
Roan’s white wall receded. Sera’s stomach turned as it had on her first arrival at this sea. Her chart had no field for drawing lines in a rocking boat.
“Don’t write now,” Nume said. “You look. Call out the numbers, and I’ll remember them for a moment.”
Holding the sail rope, the captain chose their passage through the waves first. Sera felt how long the broad curve outside the current really was. A small detour on paper took a long time in a hull.
To the right, folds overlapped like silver scales. Beyond them, Maru’s roofs stretched, then shortened. She chose neither apparent size. She waited for a point fixed at the same time.
A signal arrived from Roan, and the lane steadied around the boat. Maru’s distant reflector answered too. Today’s passage did not come from copying yesterday’s map. The eyes of people standing there today had to align again.
Nume turned outside the corrected current range. No water barrel went overboard this time. Sera was pleased by the small difference. They did not need a great secret to make the same mistake once less.
The first thing she saw near Maru was black water staining, before any roof.
Half the white storehouse wall was marked by repeated wetting and drying. Waves still covered the low stone steps. On the narrow ledge above, someone could stand and reach out, but there was no width for a safe boarding plank.
Nume shifted into more sheltered water. Or appeared behind the high wall, carrying the reflector and a thickly marked staff. Even when they drew close enough to hear, he stayed out of the water.
“Nine.”
His first word. Sera wrote today’s number beside yesterday’s. Still a number waiting to come home.
He pointed to a window behind him. The bakery’s lower room was wet. Everyone had gathered in the upper one. Water and grain remained, but the next high tide might reach the foot of the stairs.
Nume asked first about water quantities and anyone in immediate danger. Or said they could wait through daylight, but needed more high ground before the next voyage. Sera looked at the marks on the seaward wall.
The same three long marks and one short mark copied onto the cloth.
“Measured from the floor?”
He shook his head and indicated the side steps with a broad gesture. The marks began at the storehouse threshold, rather than the bottom of the wall. She took out the reference sheet.
The same line meant something different with a different starting point. Misread the short mark, and she might judge the water far higher or lower than it was.
She read the recorded threshold elevation to Or. He said they had raised the stone before the door years ago, after seawater rotted it. Today’s threshold stood above the official survey level.
A sheet of paper had nearly floated people to the wrong height.
She crossed the value with one line, leaving it legible, and wrote: recheck on site. She asked him to indicate the unchanged large stone near the bell-tower foundation, the reference residents remembered.
He set the staff against a wall less marked by the tide. She recorded two heights he indicated. A moving boat prevented precision from a single look. In each brief interval when Nume steadied the bow, she checked the same reference again.
The first two readings differed slightly.
Choose the lower one and the drying shed looked safe. Choose the higher and it felt as if she must give up everywhere. Choosing was not today’s task.
A cloud hid the water stain. She took no new reading while it was invisible. Or held the staff and waited too. When sunshine returned, the scale and wall mark separated clearly again.
Nume turned the waiting boat a little to take the wind. For the first time, Sera understood how holding a position differed from stopping a boat. While she acquired one number, sail rope and current never rested. In the margin, she noted the vessel’s orientation during that observation.
She marked the full possible range. The next high tide remained a separate estimate. A wet line showed where water had reached. Tomorrow’s water had yet to be seen.
Or fixed the reflector to its high support and moved toward the drying shed. With both Roan observers still watching the boat, he could leave his own position briefly. Sera asked Nume how much time remained, then examined beneath the building.
The roof was broad. From a distance, nine seated people would have left room to spare. Yet water came from a hole in the wall below it. Each incoming wave forced trapped water from beneath the floor, bubbling.
She remembered the two beans on the kitchen table: the disputed drain positions, points they had needed to check on site.
Or held the staff beside the hole. Its lower end became wet at once. Unlike its roof, the shed floor was low. Water trapped inside did not drain immediately when the sea retreated.
She could not mark it as a refuge.
She hatched the roof on her sketch. Or’s shoulders fell. That movement told her he had been considering moving people there.
“Do we stay in the upper bakery room?”
She did not say yes immediately. Calling it safe without knowing the next tide or the room’s condition would make today’s observations a performance.
Nume reported the time until the return signal. Sera looked once more at the residents’ slope sketch. Behind the bakery roof was a small rectangle: what the woman had called the old oven yard.
“Why was that left empty?”
Or followed her finger. The yard was windy and roofless. The stone paving once used for cooling bread remained, but its narrow approach made moving much baggage difficult.
“Look at the floor height before the roof.”
She did not yet tell anyone to evacuate there. He carried the staff up the narrow path. Only his upper body was visible. Unable to see his footing, she could not write: accessible.
After a while, the staff rose behind the roof. He signaled broadly that there were no wet marks. From the nearer water, Nume found a pale strip at the high stone edge, without the continuous black stain of seawater.
A low wall remained against the wind. A side door led directly from the upper bakery room. An awkward route for laden people was different from a route no one could walk. Or said the door had been locked for years; he would check whether it opened from inside.
Sera left the drying shed on the chart and drew another rectangle above it. High yard, no roof. Drier ground within the range checked today. Not a house where rescue ended, but somewhere people could move to while waiting for a boat.
“They wouldn’t all have to come down to shore together. Upper room to yard, yard to the top of the steps. Only the people boarding need to come down when the boat arrives.”
Or looked at the narrow ledge. They still needed a way to move the two people who struggled to walk. Others had not agreed to board first and leave family behind.
Nume kept today’s spare space empty. Carrying people down dangerous steps would not be squeezed into the last moments of a trial voyage. Instead, the captain asked about plank length and the number of helpers needed for the next boarding.
Sera recorded the answers. Rather than leave a blank where they had been unable to embark anyone, she listed what would make it possible. They passed over more water and grain. Or would put today’s share for nine in the upper room first.
The withdrawal signal arrived from distant Roan.
She wanted another look at the path below the yard, but folded the survey board. Nume turned the bow outward. Or returned to the high reflector point. Where one person left, another guarded the passage.
Homeward, Sera studied the two rectangles. A wet place with a roof. A higher place without one. The ground where people could actually sit mattered more than a handsome map seen from afar.
At Roan, Edin received the new observations. She said she had found dry ground, then added what remained unchecked: shelter from wind, the side door, moving people who could not walk easily. He included them in the next validation scope.
Varen examined the clouded side of the stone. Hearing the plank length, Tio began counting the timber left. Sera held the sock pouch. The owner of the little shoes remained across the water today too.
Nume brought one last piece of cloth from the boat, marked with the length of the door fitting. Sera gave the measurement to Tio. The side door from the high room to the yard could open from inside.
But something Or had added at close range stayed with her.
“Showing them somewhere higher doesn’t mean they’ve agreed to leave their homes.”
Sera wrote the nine names at the top of the next page. For each, she now needed to ask how far they could move, and whether they had agreed to move at all.