There were two noticeboards and, so far, nobody to read either one.
Late on the hundred and fifty-first afternoon, Sera sat on dry ground above the low pier. The public-guidance worker had brought a chair. Here the path from the storehouse met the path from the dining room. Both boards faced roughly the same way: one at the end of an awning, one against a stone wall. She did not begin by asking which had more light.
“Where do people come from?”
The worker pointed to the storehouse, then the dining-room door. Coming from the storehouse every morning, the worker read the awning board first. Sera left room beside that answer for other people's movements. They had agreed a short interval, before deciding where to place the following day's announcement. No boat would use the result. The return path was level and presently clear; the pier's edge lay outside her work.
She settled her right knee at a comfortable angle. From this chair she could see the two approaches and where people stopped. She could not see behind the boards. The worker did not ask her to count invisible feet. Nor did they need faces, names or conversations. Two rough shapes on her sheet were enough to hold the question.
The first person came out of the dining room, passed the nearer awning and stopped at the wall. Sera almost made a mark for a reader. Then the person bent, collected a basket from beneath the board and walked away. She kept the pencil above the paper. Feet stopping at words were not necessarily feet stopping for words.
“Difficult already,” the worker said.
“The basket has made a useful contribution.”
Once its owner had gone, the worker checked the present arrangement of belongings there. Nobody threw out another person's things or declared the space forbidden for all future use. Sera put down the basket as an exclusion, rather than quietly letting it disappear. Otherwise tomorrow's neat count would begin with a person who had read nothing at all.
Two adults came from the storehouse. Both stopped beneath the awning, but only one bent towards the page. The other waited. Sera marked two arrivals and one visible reader. A finger touched a line. The waiting person leaned in. Now there were two people looking at the same part. The little connecting stroke arrived on her page a little later than the two circles.
Wind pushed the awning. A band of shade crossed the writing and returned. One reader stayed bent over. The worker explained the question before asking whether the current notice was legible. Both agreed to answer. The last line was curled under, one said; the date could not be read.
The paper did not need replacing. Its lower fixing had loosened. Within the day's ordinary noticeboard work, the worker flattened the corner and fastened it again. Sera marked when the hand withdrew. Stops before that adjustment and stops afterwards belonged to different conditions. Add them together without the change, and the hidden date would vanish from the account a second time.
Three people arrived from the dining room while they worked. The first chose the wall. The next two chose the awning. None had agreed to walk like entries in a book. Direction, a shoulder already in front of the page, a load held against a hip: any could alter the order. Sera looked at her two crowded shapes. There was too much walking between them to crown one the winning board.
Nume appeared with empty hands.
“Have you come to read the notice?”
“I've come to find bread.”
“Baskets and bread are interfering with cartography.”
“What do you think most people need directions for?”
The worker pointed towards the dining room. Nume went that way, excluded from the readers with the same care as the basket's owner. Sera watched the captain leave. The reason for arriving mattered at least as much as the place where the feet paused. She had asked a question about readers; it would be very easy to answer a different question about everyone passing through.
As the sun lowered, one side of the wall board whitened. Sera expected the extra brightness to help. An adult standing there tilted their head, stepped closer, then withdrew. They crossed to the awning and read the same announcement beneath it. Sera wrote down her expectation and the movement that contradicted it. Brightness had reached the paper. That did not mean the words had reached the person.
“Brighter doesn't always win,” the worker said.
“We weren't choosing a winner.”
The worker admitted to making the boards sound like contestants. Later the glare eased. Another person read at the wall for some time. Sera left both observations beside the same shape. It had failed one reader under one light and served another later. Neither person had to be rubbed away to make the board's character simple.
Her knee began to pull before the interval ended. She finished at the agreed stopping point instead of waiting for one more arrival. The worker received the handover and kept responsibility for the remaining guidance. An adult took the empty chair inside. Nobody offered to count the rest of the evening and merge it with her observation. Her clear path home was still clear.
At supper Varen looked over the sheet.
“Why are your two points so untidy?”
“People refused to walk in reading order.”
“Might improve if you folded them.”
“Folding hid the date.”
He moved his cup. A corner trapped beneath it sprang flat. Sera laughed, then arranged what she had actually seen by approach. People from the storehouse often chose the nearer board; those from the dining room differed. She kept the basket and bread outside the reader count, and the fastening change and glare inside the account. The short interval's limits went where a reader would see them, rather than at the foot as an afterthought.
Varen nodded. He asked for no new drawing. He rested his right leg and looked through the window. Sera did not turn his absence from the awning into another missing entry. He had work he could finish in his own room. Every small discovery did not require every friend to attend as a witness.
Back in her room, she thought about the bright patch on the wall. A clean result without her mistaken expectation would leave the next worker free to make the same assumption. She kept a brief account of the changed judgment. There was no need to make her first glance look wiser than it had been.
Tio stopped at her door to look for his water bottle. She had not seen it here. Where had he last used it? Beside his snack box in the dining room, he remembered. He went to ask the person there. Sera noticed the gap she had left between I haven't seen it and It isn't there. It was wide enough for a bottle.
He returned carrying it. Behind the box, he said. Sera looked at its side before he asked what she was thinking about. The basket under the board, she told him.
“Don't count my bottle tomorrow.”
She put her own cup safely inside the table's edge. No night observation had been assigned. Outside, the awning gave a short flap. She did not add a reader every time it sounded. She lowered the lamp and left the rest of the evening beyond the edge of her sheet.
On the hundred and fifty-second morning, the worker confirmed receipt. Both approaches would keep a place to read, rather than concentrating the notice on one board. The curled corner was secured and the placing of belongings discussed with the person responsible. The worker would examine the sunset glare at another time. Sera's few minutes did not have to stand in for every future pair of eyes.
She went to Miran's container, where a chair would leave the passage open. Both stems were visible. Miran thought one had leaned yesterday evening, but could not be sure now. Sera did not make today's angle answer yesterday's question. An empty little bowl waited beside the vessel for Miran's own water allocation. She laughed and explained the basket. Miran would look at leaves before small writing, however much writing there was. That choice was no failure of guidance.
Miran had read tomorrow's notice too. A meeting about the present position on returning to Maru, she explained; it did not announce a sailing. But one adult living nearby had taken out clothes for the return. Sera stopped smiling. Clothes alone would prove nothing. Miran had actually heard the person say they were going to board a boat. She brought neither a name nor an inventory of private luggage.
Sera went to the public notice. TOMORROW: RETURN GUIDANCE stood above the ground-level place and time. The date corner was flat now. She had read the large words yesterday and understood a meeting because she already knew what was planned. Someone else had filled the same gap with a voyage.
The worker joined her. Sera asked whether the person could be asked which line had suggested departure. She did not ask who had read it wrongly. Sitting to rest her knee, she could still see the heading. Tomorrow moved by itself when a day passed; ink did not. She opened her drawing of the two boards. Beneath the points, she began with the place a person would actually arrive, before drawing anywhere for a boat to go.