The second wing unlatches with a sound like a page snapping shut and then changing its mind.
Glass blooms over us—facets, bell wicks, tidy knots that think they are laws. Beneath the opening roof, a paper-sail skiff ghosts along the inner current, low and smug, two tithers crouched with nail-bells and a steering oar polished by bad habits.
"Roof," Lupa says.
"Floor," Stone-Reed answers, hearing the skiff in the water before my eyes catch it.
"Hush," I tell the boat.
I drag a thin ring seam along the hood's edge with two fingers. The wood warms. The boat forgets how to clatter. The rope-ring prow hums keep like a throat clearing to say the right name. One—two—three—four, Kirella counts, and the lantern sits good-heavy between our hands.
The wing's mast car rattles down its track, greedy to crown the day. The catch pin is a brass finger that never learned the word enough.
"Pin first," Stone-Reed says.
"Count," I breathe.
"One—two—three—four."
On one, the scythe is in my hand. Short. Only the curve. On two, I set the hook under the catch pin—metal only—feel the heat from a hundred nailed afternoons. On three, the palm sting bites—bright, persuasive. On four, I lift a finger-width.
The car judders. Pride meets physics and remembers it has knees.
Stone-Reed rams a peg into the mast track with two quick, merciful knocks. The carriage stalls—not broken, not humiliated—just persuaded to consider stillness.
The wing keeps coming because gravity won't take advice.
"Bell," Kirella says, already moving.
He plants the WORD plate to the bell striker: WAIT glows into iron like a slow idea. He ties a fast kept-loop in the bell rope—three honest pulls or silence—then dots the name-wick with brine. The bell thinks about giving orders and settles for being polite.
On the Ambulance rail, the net tender lifts a mirror scope to paint us into paperwork. A wolf surges and drapes a shade cloth over the eye like a napkin on a scolding mouth. The scope sees a kind dark and loses interest in us entirely.
"Skiff," Lupa says, and steps.
The skiff slides under the half-open wing with a hunter's patience. Its bow hook reaches for our stern like a bad handshake. Lupa meets it, one hand to the tither's wrist, turn of hip, and sets him seated in his own coil of line before he can remember which muscles file complaints. "Breathe," she tells him, as if teaching a shop boy to carry eggs.
The second tither bobs his nail-bell like wit. Kirella touches the bell's clapper with two fingers and the WORD plate—WAIT takes the ring out of its throat. The bell coughs-polite and then decides silence is fashionable.
The skiff aims to ram once the bells fail to audition. I reach with the boat hook, slide the fork under the rudder-pin, and pop it free—metal only, neat as a seam ripper. The skiff's stern wobbles into drift, not charge; momentum turns to sulk.
Above, glass keeps opening, a roof that wants to decide the story for us.
"Corner," Stone-Reed says, pointing with his breath. "Split-ring."
I brace on the ring coins until they feel like floor. The scythe stays short. I slide the hook under the net's corner split-ring and lift a breath. The circle warps into an oval; the square skews into a rhombus. Geometry stops being proud and remembers it owes favors.
"Left of loud," Stone-Reed murmurs, and he sneaks the bow into the crooked gap he made with three inches of angle and a patience men insult until they need it. I draw a thinner ring seam along the nearest cord—audit-quiet, so the world won't invent applause if we live.
We slip the first line of glass like a polite rumor.
"Tag it," Lupa says.
She chalks WE KEEP EACH OTHER → low on the Ambulance caprail, where knuckles and boredom will read it later. Kirella ties a three-visit release on the safety pin of the mast car—so they can reset after three honest tries when the story catches up. The wolves worry at our waterline; two slick ink-leeches slap into the SORRY pouch and learn brine.
The wing, cheated of perfect, still remembers the job called down. Its second spar skims the edge of our hood with glass breath cold on my cheek.
"Face," Kirella says, already lifting his cloak. I feel the circle of shade move with his hands the way I feel the boat's ribs at my feet.
I swipe a fast moon-balm line along the nearest facet; it goes from sermon to indoor voice. I breathe. I do not love daylight. I love that it can be taught.
The Ambulance pilot catches up to dignity a step late. He hauls the mast lever; the car tries to bolt; the peg holds. The horn, mannered now, tries sales instead of threats.
"Insured names," it offers, almost friendly. "Guaranteed passage."
"We won't pay," I say.
"We won't sell," Kirella says, and the voice stone agrees with our mouths like steam from soup.
The pilot veers to keep us beneath the wing. The stuck car throws the grid crooked, and a thin KEEP twinkle lives in our wake for anyone with hunger and a boat.
The skiff, rudderless, tries to invent steering with oars and pride. Lupa shakes her head as if grading craft and uses two fingers on the remaining tither's elbow to introduce him gently to the floor. He lands unhurt and annoyed at physics; it's an improvement over being sure.
We pass the fragile place. For one breath there is nothing above us but gray noon that minds its own business.
Then the light changes its mind.
Cloud seam opening. A knife of sun drops out of a gap and rides the spray. Somewhere a distant glass face catches it and throws it at our lane—the kind of holy-glass glare I learned to hate before I learned to walk.
The ring warmth under my feet thins. My skin prickles. My skull remembers the quality of a church.
"Sun seam," Stone-Reed says, already mapping wind and haze like rope between posts.
I keep my eyes on the hood rim, not the bright. "How far to shade?"
He points with his chin. "Gray pocket. Wind-shadow. Thirty yards, skewed toward the Needle."
The Mid-Light Needle sits on the horizon like a promise trying to be stone. Between us and it, the world sharpens where it shouldn't.
"Time?" Lupa asks.
"Three slow fours," he says. "Two if she forgives us."
"She won't," I say. "So we teach her manners."
"Keep," Kirella whispers to the prow, and the rope ring hums back yes.
The mirror wing overhead decides to be helpful to the wrong story. Its last cord catches the sun seam and refracts it, scattering knives. A stray facet we didn't balm throws a thin bright blade toward my cheek.
Kirella's cloak is already there, a moving room I know by scent. One forehead to temple—one breath—and my pulse chooses steady over panic.
"Four," I say into his collar.
"Four," he answers, and the oars learn the word.
We aim for the gray. The Ambulance slides behind, caught in its own crooked grid. The skiff spins in its sulk halo. The horn tries a softer trick—"Little red—one syllable and we'll log you as 'kept.'"—and the sea doesn't even bother carrying the offer to our boat.
"Roof's back wing," Stone-Reed warns.
The second spreader flaps like a paper bird struggling with the fact of air. The mast car fights the peg; the catch pin I lifted earlier wants to be proud again.
"Again," Lupa says.
"Again," I answer.
One—two—three—four.
On one, the scythe's short hook sets deeper under the new catch pin—metal, always. On two, the peg in the mast track bites farther in with a dignified groan. On three, Kirella taps WAIT on a secondary bell I hadn't seen tucked in the spar joint; a kept-loop knots itself out of his fingers. On four, Lupa redirects the dropping spar with a nudge that leaves it doubting its own profession.
The wing lags. The square wants to be rhombus again. We give it permission.
"Corner ring," Stone-Reed says.
I slide the hook under the split-ring on the second corner. Lift. The ring tings like a chastened spoon. The grid skews enough for a boat that knows the shape of we.
Our bow slides through. The ring seam along the cord takes our brush and makes it quiet—no boast, no shout, only work.
The wolves duck in unison and grin because they meant to.
On my right, the skiff tries one last hook. Lupa lifts the man's wrist half an inch and changes his mind. He sits. She pats his shoulder as if he made a good decision in his own time.
Behind, the Ambulance finally does the math our knots taught it and backs off, wing hanging crooked, horn polite to the point of embarrassment. Below, a long shadow turns beneath our keel—a curve, a shoulder. The leviathan angles away, WAIT still warming the collar we touched. It doesn't thank us. It doesn't have to. It chooses not to be our problem for a breath. That's gratitude enough from anything wild.
And then the sun seam finds the lane.
It races toward us like a blade slid along a table edge. Spray catches it; the world explodes into a thousand tiny sermons.
My teeth ache. My palms sweat under the wrap. The lantern shifts from good-heavy to stay. The ring coins burn soft as bread you didn't ruin. I keep my eyes on the hood rim—the thirty inches of wood between me and the kind of light that writes names on stone.
"Left of loud," Stone-Reed says, drawing us two oar-widths toward a darker thought in the air.
"Count," I ask for, shameless.
"One—two—three—four." Kirella gives it with the steadiness of a man who found a rhythm he'd die keeping and hopes he won't have to prove it.
Lupa lowers, wide and ready, a wall built of patience. One wolf wedges itself by my calf, warm pressure against bone; the other leans so the hood's edge stays where it should.
I do not flare the lantern. I stack the work we already did: seams, coins, cloth, count. The seam along the hood learns to move with us, a traveling hush. The cloak becomes a double-room around my face. The prow hums keep so loud and small I think I can hear it in my teeth.
The gray pocket—wind-shadow and sea haze—waits like a door that never wanted to be a temple. Beyond it, the Mid-Light Needle pricks the horizon with a kindness it hasn't earned yet.
The sun seam strikes the wing we just escaped. Glass throws light like confetti at a wedding I wasn't invited to. The seam jumps from facet to facet, a chain of knife-bright squares. One bright blade races the others and chooses our lane.
"Two more beats," Stone-Reed says.
"Make them perfect," Lupa says, which means make them enough.
One—two—three—four. Oars feather. Our bow cuts the seam's shadow. The light at the edge of the hood breathes like fire about to remember what water is.
I tuck the scythe under my cloak. It is short and useful and loved. It can wait.
We aim the last foot of water that matters.
And the chapter ends there—with the sun seam racing down the lane like a glass-edged blade, the crooked mirror wing flashing behind us, the Ambulance lost in its own politeness, the skiff spinning harmless as laundry, the leviathan a patient dark under our keel, the gray pocket wide as a held breath, Kirella's one—two—three—four steady as a heart that refuses to sign, Lupa crouched to shield, wolves bristling, ring warmth thinning then holding, and my face lowered under the moving room of his cloak as our little boat makes a sprint only a kitchen would dare.