The shortened sounding pole lay across the heavy drafting linen like an iron lever resting on a clean white bedsheet.
It was an ugly, utilitarian instrument, bearing the scars of five seasons of mountain roads and forty-eight hours of heavy-duty violence. The shaft was seasoned northern white ash, an inch and a quarter in width, its straight grain darkened by sweat, linseed oil, and the black coal grime of the Tram Ward switching yards.
Along the upper half of the timber, thirty-two shallow, knife-cut notches marked the half-meter intervals of a standard postal road-rod. But near the base, the original brass metal ring—the clean, narrowed tip designed for probing mountain gravel—was gone. In its place, bolted through the ash with two square carriage bolts, was the forged angle-iron bracket Doma Reel had hammered out on her kitchen anvil two nights ago to clear the jammed drainage under-road drain beneath the tram sheds.
Len rested his uninjured right palm on the smooth wood of the grip.
The ash was warm from his body heat. But his fingers curled around the grain. Then, a faint, rhythmic shaking hummed through the wood into the bones of his hand. It wasn’t a magical enchantment. It was the pure, clockwork signal of moving hum.
