Neri reached Stonewake on day 1214, sixty freight days after leaving Three Wells on day 1154. She had arrived at Harp on day 1167 after the first hundred and twenty kilometers, then traveled the hundred and forty to Caldrin by day 1182. The final three hundred and twenty kilometers had taken thirty-two more days. Rain, feeding stops, an axle repair and the scheduled rests were part of those five hundred and eighty kilometers; no one had called them lost time merely because a passenger wanted to be home.
At Ressa’s rooms above the cooper yard, she found the blue pantry bucket on a shelf. It was empty, cracked near the rim, and exactly the bucket Dessa had drawn in the old day 1101 letter. Someone had laid a wooden spoon across it. When Neri lifted it down, the spoon struck its side with a hollow note.
“That’s musical,” she said.
Dessa stood in the doorway with her arms folded. “Jem said the bucket sounded lonely. Ressa kept it after the repair.”
The south pantry ceiling held a dry stain. Ressa’s paid crew had repaired that seam on day 1108, as promised in the old letter, more than a hundred days before Neri could stand beneath it. The later rains had tested it. Iven’s old north roof repair was still sound too. The house had not waited helplessly through her journey for one of them to return with tools.
