The Window Above the Shop

By evening, Elias had washed the mud from his arms, eaten half a bowl of stew, and told three people he was tired.

Now that he could sleep, he couldn’t.

He sat on the low wall outside Sella’s house. Behind him, someone was putting away bowls. Water ran along the roadside drain, carrying small leaves towards the dark.

He kept remembering the blue cord around the reports.

How clearly he had seen it. How quickly it had disappeared.

The door opened.

“If you’re hiding from the washing up,” Mara said, “you chose a very visible place.”

“I was hoping to look troubled enough that nobody asked.”

“It’s working. Sella sent me instead.”

She sat beside him and held out a cup. He took it in his left hand.

“For drinking,” she said. “You spent more time staring at your stew than eating it.”

Despite himself, he smiled.

Mara stretched her legs out. There was dried mud along the edges of her boots. She studied it for a moment, then gave up trying to scrape it off.

For a while, neither spoke.

“I know why I let them go,” Elias said eventually.

“The reports?”

He nodded.

“I’d do it again. I just wish I could stop seeing them fall.”

Mara turned towards him.

“You wanted to save Tomas and the reports.”

“Yes.”

“So did I.”

He had expected reassurance. Her answer made it easier to breathe.

“Tomorrow,” he said, “I need to talk to Tomas.”

“When he’s rested.”

“I know.”

“And when you have.”

“You’re enjoying giving orders.”

“You’re unusually bad at following them.”

Their shoulders touched as she shifted on the wall. Elias moved his bag to the ground, making room, but she stayed where she was.

“Can’t sleep either?” he asked.

“I haven’t tried.”

“Why not?”

She looked at him. “You were out here.”

He lowered his eyes to the cup. It was easier than deciding what to do with the warmth in his face.

“Oh.”

“That was a disappointing answer.”

He laughed softly. “Give me a moment.”

Mara smiled and looked back towards the road.

A little later, she rested her head against his shoulder.

“All right?” she asked.

“Yes.”

This time, he let the answer stand.

He set the cup safely on the wall beside him. When her hand settled near his, he touched her fingers with his bare left hand. She turned her palm upwards.

He hadn’t realised how tightly he had been holding himself until she leaned against him.

Tomorrow, he would ask Tomas what he had actually seen. Not what the atlas suggested, or what Elias desperately wanted to believe.

Tonight, Mara’s thumb moved once across his knuckles.

He stayed.

The next morning, Tomas asked for the atlas before he asked for breakfast.

Sella put bread beside him anyway.

They met downstairs. Orin had cleared a table, and Ivo had found a chair that allowed Tomas to stretch his bruised leg. The keeper’s leather case rested at his feet.

Elias sat opposite him.

“What did you see?” he asked.

Tomas glanced at the atlas.

“About the gate being closed at the East Sluice?”

“Everything you remember about Lena there. But tell me which parts you saw yourself and which you heard from someone else.”

Sella opened the book to the three names.

Tomas touched his own.

“My wife moved to Vey after I disappeared. That was where I went when I got out. She’d already been told I was dead.”

“How long were you missing?”

“More than a week before I reached Vey. I never wrote down how many days.”

Elias waited.

“We were carrying tools through the lower passage. There was a landing where a side stair joined it. Someone was calling below.”

“Lena heard him.”

“Yes. She was travelling with another party. They’d stopped above us.”

Tomas rubbed his thumb along the table’s edge.

“She brought the missing stair back. The man who’d been calling started climbing towards us. Then something caught him.”

“Did he get out?”

“No.”

There was no useful question Elias could put after that.

He let Tomas continue.

“The three of us carrying the tools tried to get back to the upper gate. One of my companions fell. The other went down to help him.”

“Lena went with them?”

Tomas nodded.

“I got as far as the gate. Lena shouted for me to tell the guards to shut it.”

“While she was still below.”

“There was a passage off to one side. She said she’d get both men into it.”

“And did she?”

“I saw her pull one man through its doorway. Then the gate came down.”

Elias looked at the two other names.

“And your other companion?”

“I didn’t see whether he reached the doorway.”

“Did anyone go back?”

“We tried from the upper stair. There were things against the bars.”

Tomas stopped.

Sella moved the bread within his reach. He broke a piece but didn’t eat it.

“That night, I told myself she must have known another way out,” he said. “By morning I thought I’d shut three people in.”

Elias heard the words he wasn’t saying.

“She asked you to have the gate closed,” Elias said.

“And I passed that order on,” Tomas replied. “Knowing they were still inside.”

For a moment, nobody offered Tomas an easier version.

Then Mara asked, “When did you find out she’d survived?”

Elias turned towards her.

Tomas lifted his head.

“Three days later. At the upper watch hut.”

“She came in with one of the carriers,” Tomas said. “He couldn’t walk without her.”

“Which of these two was he?” Sella asked, pointing to the other carriers’ names.

Tomas showed her.

She made a note on a separate sheet.

“Do you know what happened to him afterwards?”

“He went to his brother. I saw them together in Vey that winter.”

“And the third?”

Tomas shook his head.

Sella wrote that down too.

Elias watched her leave space beneath the last name.

“What about Lena?”

“She stayed until we found someone with a cart for the injured man. Then she asked me about the old sluice keeper’s rooms.”

“Why?”

“There was a doorway in the side gallery. She said she’d seen something through it.”

His own harbour doorway returned to Elias with painful clarity.

“What?”

“A room. That’s all she told me then.”

“Did you go with her?”

“The next day. As far as the keeper’s rooms. She went down to the gallery alone.”

“What happened?”

“She came back before dark.”

“From the gallery?”

“Yes.”

Elias sat back.

Lena had tried that route and returned. Whatever she had found there, it hadn’t taken her home.

Tomas finally took a bite of bread.

“After that, she asked for paper.”

Elias brought his own copied route to the table.

Tomas looked at it.

“Not that way.”

He turned the sheet over.

“The survey house stored reports from half the eastern roads. The sluice is farther down the valley. You reach its keeper’s rooms from the orchard path.”

Sella fetched another map.

This one had a pale rectangle where an old repair had covered part of the riverbank.

Orin leaned over it.

“I know the orchard path.”

“Does it still reach the rooms?” Mara asked.

“The upper entrance does,” Sella said. “Beren checks the water channel there. The lower gallery’s been cut off longer than I’ve been keeping stores.”

“Missing steps?” Elias asked.

“Part of the passage floor,” Tomas said. “It was already gone when I took her there.”

“And she brought it back so she could cross?”

“Yes.”

He drew the rooms in pencil on a clean sheet. His hand shook less than it had beside the kiln.

“There’s a stone cupboard in the upper room. She used its shelf to draw on. Kept the door open for the light.”

“Did she leave anything?”

“I don’t know. I waited outside.”

Elias looked at Mara.

She studied the drawing before she looked back.

“We inspect the upper room first.”

“Yes.”

“And we tell Ivo where we’re going.”

“I’m sitting here,” Ivo said.

“Then that part’s done,” Orin replied.

They left after breakfast.

Tomas stayed in Rill. He had struggled to rise from his chair, and Ivo had ended the argument before it began.

Sella stayed to help him record the names and dates.

Elias carried the new drawing inside his folded route. He had checked it three times before Mara caught him doing it a fourth.

“It hasn’t changed.”

“That seems a dangerous assumption here.”

She conceded that with a tilt of her head.

Orin walked ahead. The orchard path was broad enough for two people where roots hadn’t lifted the paving stones.

For a while, Elias and Mara walked beside each other without speaking.

In daylight, he wasn’t sure whether to mention the wall, or their hands, or the way she had stayed.

Mara saved him.

“You left your cup outside.”

“Oh.”

“Again with that answer.”

“I brought the bag in.”

“A promising start.”

He glanced at her. She was smiling.

“Did you sleep?” he asked.

“Eventually.”

“Good.”

“You?”

“Yes.”

He had, after she’d gone inside. More deeply than he had expected.

Ahead, Orin stopped at a fork.

“Which way?” Elias asked.

“I know the way. I was waiting to see how far you’d walk before noticing I’d stopped.”

Mara laughed.

Elias unfolded the drawing anyway.

The old keeper’s rooms stood above a narrow water channel.

Two square windows faced the orchard. Beneath them, a flight of ordinary stone steps descended to a locked iron grille.

Sella had given them the key Beren used.

Mara opened the grille and waited.

Cool air moved out. No scraping. No answering taps.

Orin examined the ground beside the entrance while Elias looked for the thin black reeds.

They found old leaves, a broken tile and a very indignant lizard.

Mara stepped aside to let it escape.

“Local watchman,” Orin said.

Inside, daylight reached the first room through the two windows. A rusted bracket remained where a lamp had hung.

Beyond it, a corridor ended at a break in the floor.

Elias stayed well back.

Pale lines crossed the darkness.

He could see them even from the door.

Mara followed his gaze.

“We check this room before you open that passage,” she said.

He nodded.

First, the room.

First, what was already there.

The cupboard stood beside the inner wall.

Its lower hinge had sagged. Elias lifted the door slightly before pulling, easing the weight off the damaged joint.

It opened with a low scrape.

Empty shelves. A mouse’s abandoned nest. A broken piece of chalk.

He stood looking at them.

Mara inspected the back of the door.

“Elias.”

Lines had been scratched into the wood.

At first he thought they were somebody’s measurements. Then he saw the curve at the bottom.

A harbour wall.

A mooring ring.

Above it, a row of narrow buildings climbed a hill.

His hand rose and stopped before touching the surface.

Mara moved closer.

“Home?”

He nodded.

The drawing was rough, cramped between two knots in the wood. Whoever had made it had gone over the harbour steps several times.

Near the top was a square window with a smaller square beneath it.

The shop sign.

Not enough detail for anyone else to read.

He knew where every letter should be.

“She stood here,” he said.

Mara looked from the drawing to the doorway behind them.

For once, she didn’t ask whether he was certain.

There was writing beneath the sketch.

Some of it had worn away where the cupboard door rubbed against the stone floor.

Elias crouched.

Portuguese.

After days of listening carefully to words and places he had never known, the ordinary shape of his own language made his throat tighten.

He read the first surviving line.

“The window above the shop was open.”

Mara lowered herself beside him.

“Is that something your family does—leaves the window open?”

“My father does, when the paste is drying in the shop.”

He brushed loose dust from the wood with the edge of a clean cloth, keeping clear of the scratched letters.

The next line was shorter.

“Smelled coffee.”

For a moment, he was back at the workbench.

The cup he forgot. The stair to the kitchen. His father calling down that food was ready.

His father, who now had two children missing.

He pressed his lips together.

Mara waited.

“She could see home,” he said.

“Something that looked like home,” Mara said gently.

He looked at her.

Her expression was gentle, but she didn’t take the words back.

Elias turned to the sketch again.

“Yes,” he said. “That’s what we know.”

Beneath the writing were three horizontal marks and a small arrow pointing down.

Beside them:

“Try when the water is below this.”

They made a copy before doing anything else.

Elias measured the position of the marks with a strip of paper. He drew the cupboard, its shelves and the whole door, so he would remember where the words belonged.

Orin inspected the corridor from the solid floor.

“How much of the floor is missing?” Mara asked.

“About three paces. Then there’s solid stone again.”

Elias joined them.

The pale outline showed a narrow passage with a low rail. At the far end, a second opening turned to the left.

He described everything he could see.

“We look from here. Nobody crosses,” Mara said.

“Agreed,” Elias said.

They took their places to either side.

Elias drew a breath, touched the white rail with his left hand, and held.

The floor returned.

Beyond it was a small landing. Water covered its lowest step. Three grooves had been cut into the wall beside it.

The surface lay above the highest one.

Mara lifted her hand.

Elias released his breath.

The passage disappeared.

They waited.

Nothing moved in the dark.

“The three grooves on the wall,” he said. “They looked like the marks on the cupboard door.”

“I saw them,” Mara replied.

He showed her his copy. Three lines in the same arrangement.

It didn’t prove where the doorway led.

It gave them something they could check without stepping through.

Back outside, Orin found a dry place to sit while Mara checked the water channel.

Elias stood by the grille, holding the copied drawing.

He wanted to go straight back down.

The wanting had become familiar enough that he could recognise it before he obeyed.

Mara returned.

“The channel’s flowing. We ask Beren how the level changes before we decide anything.”

“And whether the lower room floods.”

“Yes.”

He nodded and folded the paper.

She watched him put it away.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

“That was a very particular nothing.”

“You closed the passage when I signalled, even with that clue waiting on the other side.”

He glanced back at the steps.

“I wanted to keep going.”

“I know.”

Her hand brushed his. This time, he caught it before she could move away.

She looked down, then up at him.

“If it is home,” she said, “we’ll work out how to look safely.”

“We?”

She raised an eyebrow.

He smiled, but it faded as he thought of his father’s open window.

“I don’t know what happens after that.”

“Neither do I.”

For a few seconds, that was all they had.

Then she squeezed his hand.

“Find out what’s there first.”

From his seat beneath the orchard wall, Orin began making a great deal of noise with his water flask.

Mara closed her eyes briefly.

“We can hear you.”

“Good. I was about to ask whether either of you intended to walk back.”

She released Elias’s hand.

Only after they had started moving.

In Rill, Beren spread their drawing beside Tomas’s account.

He recognised the three marks.

“When the river rises, water backs up into the lower channel. A bend farther downstream slows the flow, so the water takes time to drain.”

“Does it drop every day?” Elias asked.

“Not reliably. Rain matters more than the hour.”

“So Lena’s note doesn’t give us a time to go.”

“It gives us a limit,” Mara said. “If the water’s above those marks, we stay out.”

Beren studied the level Elias had drawn.

“It’s been falling since yesterday. If the ridge stays dry, we can check again in the morning.”

Sella brought over the atlas.

Beside the old entry, on the separate sheet, she had written the names of the two men confirmed to have returned.

The third remained beneath them.

Still no answer.

Still someone who deserved one.

Elias set his copy of the cupboard drawing beside Lena’s warning.

Don’t open it because a voice sounds frightened.

Then the words he had found today.

The window above the shop was open.

She had gone back to look.

Not just for a stranger.

For home.

He didn’t yet know what had stopped her.

But now he knew where to begin.

“We’ll check the water again in the morning,” he said.

Mara drew a chair beside his.

Together, they started listing what they would need.