In the wheelwright shop behind the Old Ferry Landing, the air smelled of cedar sawdust, coal coke, hot iron, and boiled linseed oil. Eren Tal stood at his heavy ash workbench, a pair of spring dividers in his right hand and a steel try-square in his left. On the bench lay three strips of scarlet harness webbing sent through the sky-slit by Jo Saye, alongside four coils of hardened spring-bronze wire and a dozen machined brass eyelets. A pot of boiled tea sat cooling on the corner of the wood rack.
Through the open spatial sky-slit in the corner of the shop, Jo Saye’s cutting table in Harrowby was clearly visible. Jo had a tailor’s dummy set up on her side, draped in a half-finished canvas work smock. She held a spring balance—the kind used by fishermen to weigh pike—hooked to a small red canvas tab protruding from the dummy’s left cuff. The brass hinges on her wooden pattern box gleamed with specks of green copper green rust.
“Pull it again, Jo,” Eren said. He leaned over the bench with his eye level with the brass release catch he had filed from an old clock spring.
Jo pulled the spring balance with a steady, smooth stroke. The needle on the circular brass dial moved: one pound... Two pounds... Seven pounds. With a sharp, metal snick, the internal bronze sear slipped from its notch. The three-inch scarlet tab snapped outward from the cuff seam, standing rigid against the brown canvas like…
