Tio did not speak while tapping good wood.
The hammer struck a dry board twice. He leaned close and listened. A short, solid sound returned from within. The next board answered dully. He pushed it aside.
“Only dry on the outside.”
Sera touched both. Their colours looked similar. Like choosing light on the sea, wood offered something she wanted to see. One more good piece would make the plan easier.
He did not take the second board back. It would not support anyone’s weight. She removed an unusable item from the parts list.
Morning wind was still light. Varen stayed in the observation room awaiting the northern patrol’s new report. Edin checked what tools the pier could lend. An inspector’s arrival had not created timber, but sailors could spare short lengths from their vessel.
Nume first compared those lengths with the boat’s needs. Use emergency hull-repair timber too, and the boat might stop after returning from Maru. Sera did not argue away what the captain said must stay.
The Salt Steps needed an upper handhold. Maru needed a small support over the narrow doorway’s threshold and a boarding plank. Their wood came from one store, and their carpenter was Tio alone.
He set the sketches side by side. When she drew the steps sketch toward her first, he looked up.
“Because that’s where you worked?”
She stopped before answering. The stone that struck her knee was vivid. The person sitting up in Maru’s room still came to mind as a movement rather than a name. She wanted to repair the nearer pain first.
She aligned the sketches again. They could now observe from Roan’s boathouse. Preparing this voyage did not require widening all the Salt Steps. Yet they could not leave the upper return steps with a rotten handhold.
Tio proposed reinforcing only a short upper section before the tide. Lower, submerged footholds and the descent limit would stay as they were. The remaining long board would go toward Maru’s boarding plank.
“You’re not asking to extend it farther over the sea this time.”
Her ears warmed at her first proposal.
“Your hands would have to follow it out there.”
He did not laugh. Instead, he handed her the ruler, entrusting her with measuring what they needed.
They began on the dry upper steps. Rather than hammer, she held timber steady, shifting when prolonged bending hurt her knee. Tio told her not to turn while he used the tools.
Hammering fell down the cliff to the water. A saltwing surfaced below, circling near the ledge, perhaps tempted by salt on the new wood. She gathered spare cord toward her feet.
“If you eat this too, today’s rail is finished,” he told it.
It dived as though understanding, then resurfaced closer. Laughing, she almost dropped the ruler. She must also learn to laugh without releasing what she held.
The first post rocked more easily than expected. Before adding a board, he showed her its rotten base. Seeing only the upper fragment last night, she had assumed one new plank would suffice. A weak support would bring the new wood down too.
They must do less.
He abandoned half the planned length. Finish only what they could make secure, and mark the rest off limits. She looked toward the water. The shortened rail kept feeling like failure.
Yet that half contained somewhere a person could stand and turn back. It was usable if she did not draw a narrow place as wide. She revised her line and darkened the turning point.
Varen called from above. She did not run up. They put the tools away, waited until Tio stood on dry ground, and moved together. People repairing a return route should hardly hurry along it.
The inspector’s report was shorter than yesterday’s. Offshore northern wind had turned; low clouds and rough water were now more likely from this evening. Their comfortably planned day had shrunk to perhaps half of one.
Nume studied the sky and added that present low waves must be considered alongside conditions at return. Could they depart once, and could they make repeated voyages to bring everyone back, were different questions.
Sera almost took out her nine pebbles, then left them pocketed. Today she needed to examine real space aboard rather than divide stones on paper.
They loaded water, dry food, blankets, and the plank. Four passenger places might be available. Worsening conditions could reduce that; throwing supplies away to fill four seats was no plan.
“An empty place will make you think harder about the person left behind,” Nume said.
“Don’t make the boat heavier with that.”
She nodded. The captain seemed to know such feelings as cargo too. She counted water containers and sketched their lashings. Getting the plank out must not require untying everything else.
Both stones stood in sunlight. One remained white, nearly spent on the Maru return. The other was partly clouded by the brief repetition test. This morning’s sun did not make it fully recharged.
Varen examined the second. Could its remaining light support the short known passage both ways, allowing enough for return? She waited without suggesting urgent weather made it look clearer.
The keeper said a tightly limited voyage might be possible. No new route testing toward the distant submerged lighthouse. They must return before the cutoff and never force an observation together after it broke. With those conditions, Nume reassessed sky and boat.
Tio set down Maru’s support, low and light. If it did not match the floor height, please do not use it. He had never stood at that door.
Sera promised to tell Or exactly that. The maker’s limits travelled with the object. Fresh wood mingled with salt from supply containers.
After carrying the long plank aboard, Tio sat briefly. One finger was red. Asked why he had said nothing, he said he had caught it holding a nail. Not badly injured, but more hammering would hurt.
“What about this afternoon’s work?”
“I’m not doing it. I can hold the signal board.”
He wrapped the finger himself. She abandoned her thought that taking him aboard would make carpentry easier. A voyage would give him seasickness and more handwork. He already had work he could do well on Roan.
Near morning’s end, Maru’s status signal came. Still nine, but a water-level warning followed the confirmation rhythm. Sera and Edin counted separately. No immediate evacuation alarm. Yet the floor on which people could wait was shrinking.
She remembered the room’s smell beneath the bell tower: wet flour, a walking stick laid down, shoulders stopped at a doorway. Water level now arrived as human postures before numbers.
Nume would prepare, reserving final judgment until another look at the clouds. Handing observation to the inspector, Sera rewrapped her knee. Someone in the boathouse must keep seeing the boat marker while someone above read the matching time.
Edin would take the low point, Tio the signal board, Varen the lantern room. Aboard, Sera would check water and movement directly with Or after arrival. They had no reason this time to await another observer’s reply.
They ate lunch at the pier. The white-haired woman brought her grandson’s shoes but did not offer them for today’s boat. Sera saw the little pouch at her waist. She too was arranging her waiting.
“Shall I take the shoes?”
The woman shook her head.
“I’ll put them on the child when he comes.”
No date was in that sentence. Sera did not force one into it. Instead, she would inspect yard and threshold again, and take only as many as the captain allowed. The woman released the rope and nodded.
After lunch, wood dust finer than breadcrumbs remained. As Sera brushed it from Tio’s sleeve, he joked not to waste it: it had come from today’s good board and might be worth something.
She opened her palm to the wind. Once long timber, it had passed through a hand and become tiny pieces. The repaired rail and Maru’s plank held time from that same wood. Perhaps miracles did not happen only far away. She did not announce the thought. A boy with an aching finger needed somewhere to rest this afternoon more than praise.
She put the remaining tools inside, covering what would rust in rain and leaving them on a low shelf where the next person could find them. Work after their return remained in the positions of things.
Before departure she visited the repaired rail. An access restriction board marked its end. Less impressive than the long rail she had imagined, but the dry handhold did not move. Turning back, she tried it.
“How is it?” Tio asked behind her.
“I can see where I can come back.”
Only then did he smile a little, as though wanting an accurate statement more than praise. Leaving that smile, she returned to the boat.
At the pier’s end, wind shifted once. Low clouds shaded the water. Nume watched how long that direction persisted instead of immediately raising sail. Her feet aboard did not mean departure had been decided.
After a while, wind flowed steadily across. The captain agreed to the limited return voyage, no farther than inside Maru’s high rocky point, with stopping positions chosen in advance. They had seen that coast before, but shelter and holding conditions would need reassessing there.
The light opened. Watching the thin way across water, Sera counted her breaths. Like the rail repaired this morning, it had an end. Courage did not require going beyond it. They must come home within it.
As the boat left, Tio’s large board briefly shrank. He gripped it without using his sore finger. Varen’s light held the way low and even.
Sera sought Maru. Fog was already settling between roofs and bell tower. One high-room window visible on their last voyage had disappeared.
Nume eased the sail rope.
“Earlier than expected.”
Before calculating the return cutoff, Sera realised she must calculate when they would lose sight of one another. Maru’s bell rang.
This time from within the fog.