The storeroom beneath the Tramway communal kitchen was cold. It smelled of boiled turnip peelings, damp wood shavings, and the lingering stone sharpness of the sulfur wash Doma used to scrub the floorboards. Above their heads, the great timber floor beams of the rail interchange groaned under the weight of an idle coal hopper. It sent faint showers of dry soot drifting down through the floor gaps.
Len sat at the corner of the heavy pine butcher’s table, twenty-five minutes before global midnight. A single hooded copper lantern sat at his elbow, its shutter cracked just two inches to cast a narrow, aimed beam of yellow-green light across the table’s scarred surface. In the adjoining bunkhouse shed, the rhythmic, hacking cough of sick children broke through the silence at regular intervals. They were followed by the soft, murmuring comfort of a night nurse banking the peat stoves.
Before Len lay a small wooden bowl filled with fine quartz dust sand scraped from Melli Dorn’s casting molds, a saucer of rancid sheep fat, and a square of coarse wool rag torn from an old saddle blanket.
With steady, rhythmic pressure of his right thumb, Len worked the gritty sand into the rusted through surface of Deren’s bell. His left arm hung stiffly against his ribs, the linen wrap tight around the stitched forearm, throbbing with a deep, dull ache that flared whenever he shifted his weight. He didn’t use the injured arm. He braced the bell’s crown against the edge of…
