The third light did not return.
Sera’s hand stopped above the sandglass. The first two lights had come at intervals resembling Or’s records. Where the third should have been, dark waves rolled. The submerged tower was quiet as someone taking too long to answer.
She wrote: no third light. It was still morning. Low sunlight kept making bright patches look like the tower’s top. Strain hard enough, and wanting and seeing drew close.
Varen sent down a different record from the lantern room. Even his timing for the first light disagreed with hers. She was in the boathouse, he atop the tower. Two positions did not prove two people had seen the same thing.
Nume worked on the sail of the boat tied at the pier. Today’s test forbade sending it into distant water. That condition had reassured Sera when written. Now, about to use a stone, she felt afraid. Light diminished even if no boat went out.
Yesterday’s stone lay white on its charging support. It needed three full days of sunlight again. Only the clear reserve they had kept was available. Varen opened its box.
“If it doesn’t align?”
“We stop within the short test period. Leave the boat where it is.”
“And then?”
She fell silent. Plans after success ran long; plans after failure always occupied one line. Waves came in beside the boathouse support. Failure would not give Maru’s nine people a day off.
“We go back to the observation points we know. Improve the boarding place along that route.”
Only then did he lift the clear stone. What using one might establish, and what they would do if it did not, were both recorded. Her answer felt like a small promise.
Today the underwater light would not count as evidence of another observer. From Roan’s two positions, they would choose the same tower tip, measure bearings, and test whether Or’s intervals recurred. Repetition still would not prove someone was watching that light.
First, Nume intervened: the boat’s black marker would come down and white cloth go up. Sera said comparison required yesterday’s marker. The captain pointed beneath the pier, where something glittered.
“What if you’re so busy looking for yesterday’s thing that you’re watching cloth hanging from my boat?”
Her face warmed. Objects near the water might reflect light too. They agreed on a sequence of cloth changes to compare with their records afterward: a small test against assuming every submerged light came from the tower.
Tio held the large board. What if he misheard the order? Sera asked him to turn it according to the visible marker each time the cloth changed. He and Nume would check together rather than trust his memory.
“Good. Wood remembers longer than my head.”
He cut marks into the board’s back. Sera laughed, and the water’s light frightened her slightly less. Their checking now had a shape.
They made the first observation with nothing lit. From below, three silver ovals appeared; from above, two. She noted when waves crossed each. One large wave merged all three into a line.
A number board descended from the lantern room. She raised hers. Their readings lay outside tolerance. Finding the same underwater object from different positions was unlike sighting a dry rock’s peak.
Edin assisted beside her. Instead of selecting an answer, the inspector marked where their boots stood. He seemed to remember the eye height that had changed before. Without moving her support, Sera sat with her knee straight.
The second light appeared.
This time it divided before her eyes. Tio’s board turned; cloth changed at the pier. One corresponding patch vanished from the boathouse floor. It had been no answer from the tower.
She crossed that oval without erasing it. Leaving what she had first believed would help prevent mistaking the same wave for a person tonight.
Another light remained. Varen saw it too. Their revised times were closer. A small gladness rose in her chest. The light still had no name, but they might be looking at the same thing.
The agreed short test began.
Varen opened the stone’s light. Thin silver fragments joined across the water. The boat stayed at the pier. Sera tried to set a line against the submerged tower’s top, overlapping the old direction toward Maru.
Once, it aligned.
Then the way tore sideways. She braced her shoulders around the ruler and waited for the second bell in Or’s record. Maru’s distant bell sounded, its ending caught in the wind.
She could not tell if the times matched.
Edin pointed to the sandglass. Time remained. But she stopped between feeling more waiting might work and having grounds to wait. One matching value could not stand in for all the others.
On the third attempt, the tower tip jumped sideways. She could not say the actual tower moved. Wave slopes and eye height bent the light below. Above on Roan, Varen was seeing light from a quite different moment.
She raised the stop board.
Tio looked startled; the last agreed sand had not fallen. She said they could no longer confirm the same target. Without asking again, he raised the board.
The light closed.
Silver fragments became ordinary waves. Nume let go of the sail rope and sat. One boat had never moved from the pier, yet Sera felt drained as if she had crossed the open sea.
While Varen descended, Edin added a line beside failure. Separate what had been established from what had not, he asked. This time she looked toward the pier before her paper.
They had identified one cloth reflection. The submerged tower’s light remained, but split with the viewing angle. They had failed to align both positions’ times and targets reliably. No evidence of a person opposite had been obtained.
Nume passed her water.
“What didn’t we spend today, then?”
“Fuel for taking the boat out. No, we haven’t used the sail here, so—”
Her words tangled; she laughed a little. Nume laughed too.
“We didn’t send people out. Leave that off the failure list.”
She drank. Her throat stung. Failure to gain a new way did not erase the old. Maru’s high yard, side door, and morning confirmation of nine people remained.
One lower side of the lightstone had clouded. Entirely clear a moment ago, it again showed its cost. Varen sketched its condition after the brief use. He made no promise that it could support a full voyage yet. Before its next use, remaining light and return allowance needed checking.
She remembered the table with nine stones. She had hoped someone below would open a way for them, perhaps bypassing the problem of moving two people through a narrow door. Today’s failure returned that problem intact.
Later, Maru’s agreed status signal arrived. Still nine. A number board could not report that three people had practised moving to the yard. She did not add that meaning to the signal.
She listed questions for their next close conversation: the doorway where shoulders caught, where a windbreak might stand, the chair for resting while awaiting the boat. Smaller matters than today’s underwater light, but they would meet someone’s feet next.
The white-haired woman came that afternoon to change the shoelaces. Sera first said they had made no new way today. The woman set the shoes down and spread fingers stiff from holding thread.
“Has the way for that child to come disappeared, then?”
“No. We must measure the way already checked and go again. Make more room for boarding.”
“Then you’re still working on that way today.”
The woman threaded a new lace. Sera did not feel easy at once. But one word, failure, need no longer cover everything left to do.
Tio suggested visiting the Salt Steps while low water lasted. Thinking he meant to find her lost observing stand, she nearly refused. He raised a hand.
“Not down there. Let’s look at what you hold coming back.”
From the dry cliff path, they examined the upper steps. Water had worn the old rail’s base. When he pressed it, one upper board moved without a sound. Sera remembered the rope that had supported her on her first day.
“How far down does the next observer go with this?”
His question was nearer than the submerged tower. She drew wet-stone heights and places a hand could reach. A rail would not turn submerged steps into land. They needed something to hold during withdrawal.
Tio said there was too little sound timber, and no boat available now to buy more. They must ask Varen what spare items in the lighthouse could be taken apart. He briefly considered Candleholder’s fence, then shook his head.
“Remove that, and the goat will start eating the stones.”
“Goats don’t eat stones.”
“They can push them with their feet.”
For the first time that day, they properly laughed at a joke they could make now. She darkened the wet line on the sketch, separating work to finish before the tide from work that would remain afterward.
Light crabs gathered in a rock crevice above the steps, little shells darkening together under wave shadows. Perhaps the underwater light had been a creature too, she thought, then lowered her pencil. Many explanations were possible. Today’s observations entitled her to choose none.
She moved her boot back for one crab. Given its way again, it entered the crevice unhurriedly. She turned toward the cliff. Staring longer at the sea would not provide tomorrow’s timber.
At the lighthouse, a northern patrol sailor waited with a wind report. Clouds were lying low offshore; wind might roughen from late tomorrow. No storm starting time was certain, but their entire planned work period could no longer be assumed.
Varen opened a window. The low clouds had dark undersides. Sera involuntarily searched for the submerged light. A small line still appeared and vanished below. Today too, it promised them nothing.
Tio laid a dry rail fragment on the table. Twisting it broke the rotten end. She turned at the sound.
“Can you fix everything tomorrow?”
He looked down. No boast came first.
“Not everything. Start where people come back.”
She folded the submerged-tower sheet and laid the steps sketch over it. Tonight they would choose the wood someone returning must grasp, instead of waiting for another way.