Dispatches from Mythikal Spiriticus — Entry 007
From the field journal of Tamsin Quill, Cartographer of Questionable Roads
The moon rose another finger’s width. On Perrin’s slate, the last stroke of his name began to fade.
Nella said it aloud. I repeated it. Mara pressed her ink-stained palm against the slate.
The letter held.
Across the river, the woman in violet lifted her golden lantern.
“Keep doing that,” she called. “Names first. Questions when we have a bridge.”
“We’re a little short of bridges,” I said.
The elderly miller pointed at Vale’s silver measuring cord, still twisting between the banks.
“Does that thing carry carts?”
“It is calibrated for authorized passage,” Vale said.
“Excellent. I authorize my cart.”
He clicked his tongue to the mule. The cord spread beneath its hooves into a narrow silver track.
The moon-moth settled behind my ear. “I like him.”
“You like everyone who brings a vehicle.”
“Vehicles have somewhere to sit.”
The cart reached us. Its wheels left circles of silver dust on the grass.
“Edrin,” the miller told me. “I’d offer flour, but I’ve brought something considerably more troublesome.”
The woman climbed down.
“Ilyra Venn. I used to make his copies.”
Vale closed his pale book.
“You used to understand discretion.”
“I used to think the small writing was there to help people.”
Her lantern held no wick. Fine gold letters drifted inside its glass.
Mara drew the village’s blank agreement from her cloak.
“Can your light bring this back?”
“Only what I saw written,” Ilyra said. “I cannot supply what was never there.”
She held the lantern above the paper. Beneath its light, seventeen signatures returned.
So did the heading: RIVERBANK REPAIRS AND SAFE PASSAGE.
Mara leaned closer.
“That’s what we were told we were signing.”
“It is what they signed,” Ilyra said. “I stood beside the table.”
Vale tapped his case. “The transfer clause is in the registered copy.”
“Then show us.”
He did not move.
A cottage window vanished behind Mara. Its curtain hung unsupported in the moonlight.
I opened my journal.
“Who lives there?”
“Sella Moss,” Mara said. “And her sister.”
“Jun,” Perrin added. “She keeps bees.”
Nella wrote both names in her recipe book. I wrote them in mine. Perrin spoke them again.
The window returned around its curtain.
Doors opened along the lane. Voices took up the names. Edrin began calling out households, and neighbors answered from their thresholds.
Ilyra set her lantern on the cart’s tailboard beside Vale’s book.
“Open it, Orren. They are spending their breath keeping this place here.”
He opened it.
Under the golden light, the hidden clause rose from the page. Its letters cast shadows toward the seventeen signatures.
All seventeen shadows stopped short.
“You added it afterward,” Mara said.
“The measurements are accurate.”
“I watched them agree to repair a riverbank,” Ilyra replied. “Show me one person who agreed to sell it.”
Vale looked toward the cottages. No one stepped forward.
His rulers rattled in their case.
I put my journal beside the agreement. Nella added her blue book. Perrin laid down his slate.
The pale book turned its own page.
WITNESS RECEIVED. TRANSFER UNSUPPORTED.
The gate-shaped marks peeled away from the signatures and fell onto the tailboard as curls of grey ash.
Outside, the white survey stakes split down their centers.
Vale reached for his book. This time it let him close it.
“My clients will hear of this.”
“Tell them about the bees,” Perrin said.
The moon-moth nodded solemnly. “Include the number of bees.”
Vale took his case and crossed the river on a single silver line. When he reached the far bank, he reeled it in.
No bridge replaced it.
Mara stared at the empty crossing.
“Why hasn’t the road come back?”
Ilyra turned toward the place where the toll gate waited.
“His claim failed. Yours was a different bargain.”
Mara’s hands curled around the agreement.
“I gave away the way home.”
Around us, villagers were still saying one another’s names. The moon cleared the mill roof. This time, the ink on Perrin’s slate stayed dark.
Our records and their voices were holding Hearthmere together. They could not put a single stone across the river.
I checked my compass.
It pointed toward the unseen toll gate.
“Then we go back,” I said.
“With what payment?” Nella asked.
For once, I had no clever answer.
Behind us, Edrin opened the mill door. Warm lamplight fell across a row of empty flour sacks.
“Before you bargain for a road,” he said, “you ought to know what we need it for.”
He lifted the last sack. Three handfuls of flour slid into its corner.
Hearthmere remembered itself.
Now we had to get it home.
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