The side door opened. No one came out.
Sera looked up at the bakery’s high room on Maru. Or pushed the handle, opening a narrow strip of shade. Someone dragged a stool behind it. People’s feet moved more slowly than doors.
The water was lower today. Nume chose an inner rock ledge where waves briefly eased and brought the boat alongside. One able adult could climb using both hands, but there was no width for two people supporting someone between them. This was not the same as a passenger landing.
Sera tested her knee. It hurt less, but she could not clear the high step at once. Or reached down while Nume held the plank’s lower end. After stating when she would return, she climbed slowly ashore.
Varen in Roan’s lantern room and Edin in the boathouse were watching the same boat marker. Or checked how long he could leave his fixed reflector position. Another person ashore did not automatically create another observation point.
Today they used yesterday’s partly clouded stone. Varen had checked its remaining light and approved only a short return observation. One clear reserve stayed boxed. Sera carried a timetable she would keep until she came back.
Salt smelled strong beneath the bell tower. Broken roof boards leaned against a wall; dry waterweed hung from a door handle. Passing them, Or began speaking faster.
“The high yard’s empty. Everyone can go there.”
She watched his shoulders as he led the way. He looked like someone longing to be done with work far heavier than hers.
“Have all nine said that?”
He slowed. A short cough came from inside. Instead of answering, he invited her in.
The high room faintly smelled of baking. Wet flour sacks stayed downstairs; dry grain stood opposite the stove. Yesterday’s supply-container cord had been retied around the water jar’s lid.
Eight people were there besides Or. Sera did not immediately recite the names she had learned on Roan. She introduced herself and asked whom she could speak with. An elderly resident beside the window tapped a stool.
“Sit. If you stand, we feel we must follow you straightaway.”
She sat. As her bandaged knee straightened, the woman beside her touched her own ankle. She was one of the two who struggled to walk. The other lay on a bench near the door.
“That yard has no roof,” the elder said.
“There’s a low wall. I’ve come to check where the wind enters.”
“Leave a house to lie there, and you’ll be wet all night.”
Sera did not promise otherwise. On her chart, it was a dry rectangle. For this person, it meant abandoning a roof. She noticed the bread crust in the elder’s bowl. Not everyone faced the same yard.
Or said the lower room was already wet. A woman interrupted.
“We know. Our feet were in it. But who carries my mother?”
Silence settled. Sera folded her slope sketch. She had drawn the lines representing helpers. Here they must decide whose arms those lines were.
Or and the baker went through the side door first. She watched the width of their slow passage. The outer threshold stood higher than a toe; a small groove cut one side of the stone floor. A walking stick could catch there.
Nume passed an empty supply box from the boat. They did not use it as a fixed step. Or placed a chair beside the door for resting. Before lowering anything, Sera measured the threshold for Tio.
Wind did not come directly from the sea. It curled around the oven wall into the yard, folding one side of her dry cloth inward. The elder’s worry about wet nights was reasonable.
The baker pointed to two old doors. Or suggested raising the wall with them. Sera first examined their hinges trembling in the wind. A poorly secured windbreak could fall on the people beneath it.
Instead, they gathered dry belongings behind the low wall to find its sheltered portion. Heavy sacks stayed below head height. They distinguished a place to sit in daylight from a room for the night. The yard was no new house that defeated every weather.
The elder reached the side door with a familiar walking stick. The baker supported one elbow; a relative matched the pace on the other side. Sera did not pull from ahead. She moved the chair to meet the slow feet.
After three steps, the elder stopped.
“You can’t see the sea sitting here.”
Sera lowered her eyes to the seated height behind the wall. It was true. The room offered a view of approaching boats; the yard’s most sheltered seat did not. Or promised to tell them when a boat came.
“And when you go to ring the bell?”
He fell silent. One person carrying every role had just discovered an empty place.
A woman raised her hand. She could walk and would watch signals from the window. Another relative would place water and blankets outside. Only then did Sera begin filling the spaces beside the yard with names.
Or had proposed sending the strongest people down first, to receive the two less mobile residents below. But if those helpers left first, too few would remain to support people in the room.
Sera laid out nine pebbles, two on a cloth for those who struggled to walk. Whenever they moved a stone, they checked where the others remained.
“We need an order for separate boatloads too. The captain must decide how many can board from the sea conditions then.”
“What use is deciding today, then?”
“All nine won’t have to come down the steps together just because a boat arrives.”
The elder studied the stones, then left one inside the doorway beside a stone on the cloth, choosing a relative to stay nearby. Sera wrote the name. If rescue order was not to sound like abandonment order, the people themselves needed hands on the map.
Nume rang once from the boat: the first time warning. Sera did not force unfinished matters into conclusions. Today they had arranged practice between room and yard, and how to distribute water and blankets. Steps and boarding still required another check of plank and waves.
The person on the bench slowly sat up and asked whether they could pass through the door. Or nearly said yes, then stopped. He moved the chair; two people stood side by side.
Their shoulders caught.
Sera revised the measurement. Two helpers could not support someone from opposite sides there. They would need to test, slowly, whether one person could check ahead while another supported an arm, and whether that felt comfortable. The resident chose to reach only the doorway today.
Or nodded. His grip on a pebble loosened. Persuasion did not mean making everyone move at one speed.
The residents counted their water and grain first. Supplied containers did not mean nine people could wait indefinitely. They decided what to ration first if stronger wind kept the boat away another day. Sera recorded the checked amounts and next check time.
A child caught her map’s corner: the owner of the little shoes a woman kept on Roan. The child asked her to draw home. When she asked where it was, a finger pointed beyond the sea, rather than at the wet lower room.
“Where Grandma is.”
She did not immediately draw a house. She said the woman was well and had repaired the shoes. The child looked down at bare feet. Sera hoped the news told him that across the water, someone was waiting for him, someone to hold on to before he put on any shoes.
On the way back, Or stopped at the bell tower for tomorrow morning’s status signal sheet. Smell divided wet places from dry inside. The bottom of a record sheet on the wall had dried brown.
Sera noticed small dots beside the bell times, absent from the official signal chart. Or had recorded intervals when the underwater light returned at night. Apparently matching intervals varied with the tide. He had never identified anyone.
“Could a person have answered?”
“Some days I wrote because I hoped so. That’s why I couldn’t write a name.”
Dates below included observations from before her arrival. This light had not suddenly appeared for their sake. Time she knew nothing of had already accumulated in one part of the sea.
With permission, she copied those observations alone, leaving the residents’ private requests. Nume rang a second time. She put down her pencil.
Her knee pulled again on the descent. Climbing comfortably did not make coming down the same. Or kept hold of the rope until she had the rail. Nume chose the boat’s position and withdrew the plank after she sat.
Three people had briefly come into the yard. They had not lined up all eight; only those who had practised peered above the high wall. Sera raised a hand. Nine remained nine. Within that number, though, there were now people who would stay beside one another.
The partly clouded stone’s light thinned further on the return. Nume kept the short curve agreed at departure, adding no new route to extend their time. Once the boat was tied, Varen moved the stone to its charging support. It could not support another voyage for a while.
Seeing the threshold sketch, Tio pointed at the narrow part. A long plank alone would not solve it. Even back on Roan, Sera remembered the doorway in her body. Shoulders striking wood sounded again at her pencil’s tip.
That evening, in the eleven returnees’ temporary lodging, the woman held out her grandson’s shoes. Sera said she had seen him today. The woman waited a long time, hands still cupped beneath them. Sera told her he had called the place where his grandmother lived home.
She laughed and cried. Sera looked away for a moment. Scenes absent from maps could still move the next departure.
Before night observations, Varen spread Or’s copied records: three returns of the underwater light, then a line recording no fourth. Sera placed her first-day timings beside them. They seemed to fit until she noticed the reference bells differed.
“We can’t call it a reply, can we?”
Varen looked out.
“Wait for the same thing tomorrow. If it doesn’t come, write that.”
She looked at the clear reserve’s box. Someone below might help the way back from Maru. But a hoped-for person could not be counted as an observer.
On the next page she drew two empty points: Roan, and the bearing of the underwater light. The name beside the second stayed blank.
Before sending a boat in trust of that blank, she would have to let her own eyes prove her wrong.