The patch Miran had chosen already had something hanging in its sky.
On the morning of the hundred and forty-first day, Sera stood at the yard's edge and looked up at the washing line. Two wet sailcloths sagged over the earth that had looked empty last evening. Drops from one corner made a little pit. Miran admitted she had thought nobody was using the ground. Sera admitted that her own paper contained nothing but a rectangle.
Nea, the adult coordinating the yard between kitchen and storehouse, called them onto level ground. A place empty at one hour was not necessarily a place nobody needed. Today the sails were drying. Later, empty barrels would pass underneath. Sera watched the shade shift. Things she had left off her drawing were taking up time as well as space.
Miran kept her drawing of the house on Maru folded away. She wanted something small to tend with her hands, she explained, not a field to feed everyone. How long would she need the patch? She did not know. Nea said that uncertainty belonged in the agreement too. Next month could not be lent as though it were this morning's empty corner.
Avoiding another drop, Miran looked down at her shoes. At home, however narrow the yard, she had known what would be put there. Here even an empty place required a question. Sometimes that hurt. Sera nearly answered that borrowed ground required permission. It was true and entirely unable to measure what Miran had just told her.
Instead, she described her first drawing of Roan. All its doors had looked alike on paper. One led into Varen's room; another into public stores. She had been slow to give them different marks.
“Is that why you kept knocking?”
“I nearly opened the one I should have knocked on.”
Miran looked up. For a moment they stood beneath the wet cloth, sharing mistakes that had not been the same mistake. Nea let the conversation finish, explained what could be examined before the present handover ended, and returned to the stores. Miran said she did not altogether dislike someone hearing her and then getting on with their own work.
Sera had arrived ready to ask how many hours of sun the ground received. Miran's first question was what must not be moved. Nea showed them the passage beneath the sails, the water receiver behind the kitchen, and the space needed outside the emergency door. Sera asked which arrangement that boundary described. Today's daytime arrangement, Nea said. She put the time beside the line.
A narrow strip of stones at the yard's edge looked promising. Then Nea brought them around to its side. At its end lay a low water channel, kept clear of the drainage serving the repaired stairs. One step had changed Sera's empty rectangle into a route for water. Miran said she would not plant there. Sera labelled the channel on her first drawing without pretending she had remembered it first.
“At this rate there'll only be sunshine left on the sea,” Miran said.
“Easy watering there,” Nea answered. “Bit salty.”
The wall's foot had dried white. Until that moment, Sera's ignorance of growing things had been a general admission. Now it had a place and a colour. Sunshine and room were not enough. She could draw the salt mark without knowing what a root would make of it.
An adult cook who tended a few kitchen plants came out before lunch preparations, within the short time Nea had arranged. Crumbling a little earth, the cook asked what Miran wanted to grow. She had thought of the leaves they ate on Maru, but did not know whether those would grow here. The cook's containers and this strip of ground did not hold the same soil.
There was no trial handful of seed flung into the yard. The cook could check the spare growing soil and seeds already in use, and give quantities and prices. Buying and paying remained separate decisions. Sera stopped herself writing the cook down as the person responsible for the new garden. An answer offered before lunch did not include every morning afterwards.
Miran suggested a movable container. That might work, Nea said, provided wind, drainage, and passage allowed it. Sera could mark the sun's boundary from two level positions her knee permitted. One morning look would not describe the whole day. Could the afternoon yard worker make a short observation before the agreed finish? Nea accepted that part.
No boat was needed. No separated shores had to agree a tide time. They still had to explain which corner each observer meant. Sera chose a brick joint and an existing fixed edge at ground level. She left the washing-line attachment out; its height could change. Remembering the neat round loop from the stairs had at last altered the direction of her pencil.
Miran asked for paper of her own. She wanted to show where she had stood, not simply receive Sera's rectangle. Her circle of sunshine acquired an enormous sailcloth. Sera laughed at its size.
“It did most of the moving this morning,” Miran said.
When the morning interval ended, Sera returned to her room. Her right knee pulled. Miran still had costs and tending time to discuss with Nea; she did not need a cartographer beside her to make those questions sufficient. On the way back, adults used yesterday's limited walking width on the stairs. Heavy carts kept to the level route. The two ways were still carrying different loads.
Varen examined the drawing outside his low room. Washing instead of the sea?
“The cloth changes more often than a chart.”
“Will you inspect my wet clothes next?”
“I don't take private routes.”
She sat after laughing. His right leg crossed the threshold slowly. Neither of them offered him as an afternoon observer merely because he was there.
At lunch, Miran explained the conditions she had received. Tomorrow they could try one empty movable container in a candidate position. No soil or seed yet; permission and responsibility for clearing it away still needed settling. Sera changed her congratulations halfway through. They had found somewhere to try a container, rather than acquired a garden.
That was a large enough pleasure, Miran said. Sera let it remain that size. Miran would count the time she could give in mornings and evenings. She did not add the other residents' hands to her own. Twenty was the number of Maru residents at Roan, not the number of people volunteering for her soil.
Nea's afternoon sheet showed barrels moved during the day and the sails' later shade. Beside Miran's drawing and Sera's fixed corners, it explained why part of the apparently open strip had been covered for so long. They could describe today's obstruction. They could not yet pronounce a crop doomed for lack of light.
Before evening preparations, the cook sent the promised answer: a little seed of a leaf crop already growing in the kitchen containers, with an available portion and price. Miran did not take it yet. First she wanted to choose the container and see what carrying water would require of her. Not buying something could be a step, Sera found, when it followed an answer instead of a delay without one.
Later, two adults took down the sailcloths. Miran stood beneath them with her blank paper. Sunshine finally reached the ground, though it had not been there all day. She did not wave to Sera's window. Sera put her pencil down. Another person's day did not become an observation merely because she could see it.
Both lightstones remained clear in Roan's dry chests, unused and undispatched. There had still been eight actual departures and seven completed limited round trips. Sun over a yard was not a fourth charge stored up for later. All twenty residents remained at Roan. Miran's candidate container had not become a replacement home, either.
At supper, Or asked what she would plant. She had not chosen. Instead of asking for a share, Or asked that the watering vessel stay clear of the passage. Miran agreed. Sera liked an evening in which a small inconvenience could be mentioned before anyone was required to call it hope.
Nea had found an empty wooden box whose owner could spare it. One part of its base had lifted. Tomorrow an adult maintenance worker could examine it briefly. Miran wanted to hear the repair cost and the price of a new container before deciding. Nobody proposed borrowing Tio's injured finger to make a free garden.
Sera folded her rectangle. Finding a place for sunlight had left them with a question about the bottom that must hold it. The blue clay bell stayed beside the window, silent and clapperless. She left room on the paper for the box's actual width, then lowered the lamp. Tonight's questions did not have to put out leaves.