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The Shuffling Streets · 1. hooaeg · 4. osa
The Long Way Home
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Loo senikäik
In Marrowick, the streets rearrange themselves at the midnight Turning unless Wayfinders mark them with chalk. Apprentice Ilo Brandle found that her tiny chalk mark on Cobbler's Row never faded, and Master Fenn thinks chalk was never the real key. Now Ilo and her goat Mop kneel on the lost Baker's Mile, hoping to ask it to go home.
The Hub clock struck the first note of midnight, and Ilo felt it in her knees.
Baker's Mile lay behind the tannery, where it had no business being. Its ovens were cold and its shop signs hung crooked. At its old home, two corners shone white with Master Fenn's chalk. They were a doorway with no street in it.
"Please," Ilo said. Her voice came out very small. She put her palm flat on the cobbles. "You are in the wrong place. Will you go home?"
Nothing happened. Second note. Third note. Mop chewed a corner of the paper she had in her pocket, which was a bad sign, because Mop only did that when he was worried.
Ilo counted. She always counted when she was afraid. One, two, three, four. Her last mark had held, but maybe that was luck. Maybe the street would simply shrug and wander off to the Loose Quarter, with her kneeling on it.
Then the cobbles under her hand grew warm, the same warmth as the little mark on Cobbler's Row. It was not a command. It felt more like someone leaning closer to hear.
"I am not going to hold you," Ilo said, and the words surprised her. "Chalk holds. I know that. But the baker misses you, and her bread has nowhere to go. I only want to ask."
On the ninth stroke, Baker's Mile shivered. Every loose shutter rattled at once. Mop braced his four hooves and looked offended.
The street rose, just a little, the way a sleeper sits up. Then it began to slide. It moved slowly and politely, as if it did not want to spill anyone's tea.
Ilo held on to a lamp post. She had never ridden a street before. The tannery wall slid past, then a row of rain barrels, then a dark alley that was in the middle of turning into a different alley. Somewhere to the left, the Loose Quarter rumbled like a giant clearing its throat.
"Not that way," Ilo whispered. Baker's Mile paused, wobbled, and bent back toward the Hub. She could not see the clock tower, but she knew it was there. It was the one thing in Marrowick that never moved.
Then the street ahead of them split. A whole row of cobbles dropped away, and cold air rose from the hole. Somebody else's street had slid into the way, and its edge hung out over nothing.
Ilo took out her tin whistle and blew one short note. The echo came back slow and soft, like a voice from the bottom of a well. That meant the ground ahead was about to move, and she knew she must not step there.
Mop did not stop to listen. He trotted left, hopped over a loose drain cover, and stood on a gray cobble with his beard raised in triumph. He looked back at her and bleated.
"All right," said Ilo. "I trust you." She counted the steps to him, nine long ones, and put her foot exactly where his had been. The cobble held. Behind her, the street seemed to hold its breath, and then it followed. Every lamp post ticked into line behind her goat.
They went on like that. Ilo asked, Mop chose, and the street slid after them. Once the street stalled, and Ilo said, "I know it is hard. You have had a strange week, too," and it gave a long creak and moved on. Once a fat grey fog-finger from the Gap drifted over the rooftops, and the whole street went still until it passed.
At last the echo of her whistle came back sharp and quick, like a clap in a stone hall. Ahead stood Fenn's two white corners, glowing in the dark.
Baker's Mile slid between them as neatly as a key into a lock. The last cobble clicked. The ovens, the crooked signs and the flour-dusted doorsteps were all home. Ilo sat down hard and discovered that her legs were shaking.
Mop ate the rest of her paper. She let him.
Before dawn, a back door opened and Tamsin Quill stood there in her apron, staring at her own street. She looked up, then down, then at Ilo. She said nothing for a long moment. Then she shrugged, the way she did about bad mornings and now apparently about miracles, and went back inside.
A minute later the first oven door clanged, and the smell of hot bread rolled out across the cobbles.
Ilo laid her hand on the street once more. It was warm, and a little tired, and, she thought, pleased. Far off across Marrowick, from the direction of the Loose Quarter, she felt a second warmth, faint but certain. It was another street, one that had never been chalked in its whole life, and it had turned its face toward her.
Tänaseks kõik.