On Wednesday morning Ivo tied a blue ribbon to the rail at the end of the quay. He had done the same thing on Monday. By Tuesday breakfast, the first ribbon still hung from the rail, wet with rain; across the harbour there was only water.
His mother let him finish the knot. ‘What are you hoping it will do?’ she asked.
‘Be here tomorrow.’
‘Good,’ said Hester. ‘That's a job a ribbon can manage.’
Across the water there were only the north cranes and an uninterrupted horizon. Bellwether Island had had a school, a mill, forty-three houses and a landing where Hester sold bread before the morning ferry arrived. Sixty-eight residents had come to the mainland ahead of Monday night's storm. The rest were still there, if there remained a place one could reach.
Catrin watched Ivo pull the knot tight. A school drawing stuck out of his coat pocket: the mill, blue water and a teacher's question beneath it, Did you see it yourself? In his large handwriting he had answered, On Monday.
‘The council map shows open water,’ Hester said.
‘The old gauge moved this morning.’
‘Then use it.’
The sixty-eight people in the emergency hall had been given beds. Yesterday the kitchen made them sign for every bowl of soup under temporary presence. Ivo's grandmother had been born on Bellwether; his own address now came up blank. Catrin had watched him turn the meal slip over, looking for the rest of the page.
At 07:12 the brass tide gauge in the harbour shed scratched a low, broad rise across its paper strip. It had done so every weekday morning for forty years, when the ferry passed the wall. On Tuesday it had drawn a straight line. Today there was a rise again.
Catrin held the strip beside the ferry log. Monday's crossing was there. Wednesday's row was blank. Tuesday's map revision appeared in small type at the bottom of every log page.
The gauge had been bolted to the wall before the First Division. Its needle trembled under Catrin's hand. A matching gauge stood at Bellwether's mill, its brass face turned towards this same stretch of water.
‘A wave could have made this,’ Catrin told Hester.
‘Then ask the wave a question.’
They borrowed the harbour tug. Its captain made Catrin sign a repair indemnity before she touched the engine; an active test could cost him a propeller. She wrote four short bursts, one long, three short on a card. He drove the tug against its mooring in that pattern, making the gauge jump. They waited through the next interval.
Four short rises came back. Then one long. Then three short.
‘An echo,’ the captain said.
‘Again.’ Catrin crossed out the card and wrote a new sequence. Under the old harbour code, the second answer came back in reverse order. The captain sent two long bursts, then five short ones.
Hester leant over the gauge, counting the marks as they came in: five short, then two long.
‘Someone heard us,’ Catrin said. ‘That doesn't mean a person can cross.’
The captain stopped smiling. He looked out over the empty water, then down at his own hands on the engine control.
‘The ferry's there,’ Hester said.
‘Someone is there with a pump or an engine,’ Catrin said. ‘That is enough to try the cable.’
The island had once had three routes to the mainland: the ferry channel, a radio repeater on the breakwater and a copper power cable laid under the harbour bed. Shore power alone could open a passage briefly; only the cable running in phase at both ends could hold it. The radio repeater had failed years ago; the council had deferred its replacement every winter. When the storm reached the flood pumps on Monday, the mainland relay had lost power too.
The continuity chart offered ninety-four possible shorelines. Catrin folded it until only the harbour remained visible.
Catrin went to the relay house. The terminal beside the door showed an order dated Monday: island relay failed. Its footer carried Tuesday's map revision. Doran stood by an open service panel with an electrician. He had supervised Catrin for eleven years, and his name was at the foot of the order.
‘The inland pumps were failing,’ he said before she could ask. ‘I had eighteen minutes to choose.’
‘Why did your order say the island relay had failed on its own?’
‘I wrote another one.’ He took a folded sheet from his coat. His signature crossed the instruction to divert power. On the terminal, Tuesday's version said the island relay had failed by itself. ‘I kept the ink copy.’
‘You let people believe the island had gone without warning.’
‘I knew they would ask me to turn the pumps off again. I wasn't ready to answer.’
Catrin took the ink order from him. The fold had worn white along its edge.
The electrician showed them the numbers. Bellwether's generator could sustain the cable once both relays started together. Its fuel might last until noon. The island relay was meant to latch automatically when the shore tone reached it. To begin the start-up from the mainland, they needed eleven minutes from the crane bank's stored power. The bank also held the north storm gate open while its motors reset. If they drained it, the gate would hang low until the next charge. At the forecast tide, water could enter the lower market.
‘Could,’ Doran said.
‘If we wait for the next charge,’ Catrin said, ‘what's left in their fuel tank?’
Hester came in carrying the bread tin Ivo had brought from home. Two rolls knocked softly against its lid as she set it on the bench.
‘When do you start?’ Hester asked.
‘After we warn the market,’ Catrin said.
Doran looked at the clock. ‘Noon is three hours away.’
‘Then help me knock on doors.’
They went stall by stall. The fish seller laughed and moved his freezers uphill anyway. The tailor stayed to help the grocer lift sacks of rice. Two traders refused to leave until the deputy mayor signed a damage guarantee. She signed one on a wet clipboard. By ten, the market drains were clear and the vulnerable stock was above the painted flood line.
At the quay Ivo had tied another ribbon beside the first. Hester asked him to go with the traders to the school on higher ground. He shook his head until she knelt and gave him the bread tin.
‘Carry this for me,’ she said. ‘I'll need it when I get back.’
He took the tin with both arms. ‘Will you know where I am?’
Hester touched the dent in its lid. ‘At the school,’ she said. ‘I'll come there.’
Doran brought the harbour tug alongside the relay house. The electrician connected a start-up tone generator to the old shore cable. Catrin sent the tug's two-long, five-short challenge once more through the water. The gauge gave back five short, two long.
At 10:34 the crane bank began to empty into the cable. The air over the water darkened by a shade too small to name. The north cranes doubled, then joined themselves. For a moment Catrin could see a stair descending from the harbour wall into water that had no room for it. The tide gauge ran a line so jagged she thought its needle would break.
‘Seven minutes,’ called the electrician.
The island came into view gradually: first the mill chimney, then roofs, then a pale line of shingle. Both relay lamps shone green. A ferry waited beyond it, crowded with people still fastening coats. Catrin had imagined the island returning like a dropped object recovered from the bottom of a bag. Instead, its ordinary size frightened her. There were streets over there. There was washing on a line.
The ferry moved towards them. Hester gripped the rail hard enough to whiten her knuckles.
‘They're crossing,’ Doran said.
‘Wait,’ said Catrin.
The island lamp blinked out. The cable meter fell, and the mill chimney wavered. The ferry was halfway across; Catrin could no longer see the water beneath its stern.
‘Eight minutes,’ the electrician said. ‘Island latch has dropped. Someone has to reset it by hand.’
Hester ran to the tug's engine control. ‘The captain knows the miller's stop code,’ she said. ‘Three long bursts. Everyone on Bellwether knows it. The relay house is beside the mill.’
‘A warning?’ Catrin asked.
‘A request to wait. We used it when the bread wasn't on board.’
She drove three heavy bursts into the shared water. The gauge answered with a ragged mark, then another. The ferry slowed. Across the channel, a figure at the mill gauge looked up and ran towards the dark relay house. A moment later its windows flashed white.
The mainland meter steadied.
‘Island power,’ said the electrician. ‘They have it.’
The crane bank reached empty. The north storm gate dropped half a metre. Below the market wall, water pushed through a drain and spread across the cobbles. The traders had lifted their goods; now they stood with brooms and boards to keep the water out of the school lane. A crate of tomatoes split against the kerb. Catrin watched the fruit turn in the water.
The ferry came in. People stepped down with suitcases, cages, a bicycle without a front wheel. Behind them Bellwether remained visible. Its mill was still running; the electrician kept one hand on the cable meter.
Hester met the captain first. She asked after the people who had stayed on the island. He gave her names, one at a time, while Ivo ran from the school with the bread tin banging against his knees. When he reached her, she opened it and handed the last roll to a girl coming off the ferry. It had gone hard, but the girl ate it as they walked.
Doran was writing the restoration order in ink. Catrin pointed to Monday's disconnection and waited while he added it. She put the wet market guarantee under the same clip.
‘It will make an ugly account,’ he said.
‘Leave it in.’
At the rail, Ivo's two ribbons hung side by side. They were still there when the first crate of flour came off the ferry. Catrin looked across the harbour. The mill chimney held steady against the sky.
No published comments yet.