At two o’clock in the afternoon, Eren Tal struck the brass rim of the Courtesy Arch with the flat of a wooden mallet. The sound was a low, ringing chime that shook through the floorboards of the washroom, stirring the thin film of water in the drainage trough. Ten seconds later, the runes along the upper top door beam flickered with a faint, amber soft glow. The sound channel opened with a soft, breathy rush of static.
Through the opening came the sounds of Harrowby. The distant hum of traffic on the bypass, the clatter of rain against a corrugated iron garage roof. The sharp hiss of a kettle being pulled from a gas ring. The scent of boiled tea drifted faintly across the threshold. It mixed with the bitter silt stench of the Lowbank river and the faint green rust crust on the arch joints.
“We’re here,” Ada Morland’s voice said through the arch. It was flat, dry, and strained. He carried the metal edge of a woman whose nervous system was frayed by twenty-four hours of constant pain. “Jo is sitting by the window with her cutting shears, and Imran just pulled up in his van. Talk, Pella. We’re on our own time.”
