A Hand Too Eager

Celia had allowed six inches for the test. She checked the mark on the quay stone, then checked it again against her notebook. The figures agreed with one another, which was less reassuring than it ought to have been.

Mira stood at the address cut into the old mooring block. She had agreed to witness the route and to call a halt if Celia failed to answer her. Dr. Sable waited close enough to reach her drawing hand. He had set his watch on the block where all three could see it.

“Tell me what you intend to use,” he said.

“One walk along this quay. No other recollection.” Celia tapped the entry she had written that morning. “From the fish stairs to this mooring. I was carrying my chain. The stones were slick. I stepped round a broken crate and caught my sleeve on the rope hook.”

“That is the limit,” Sable said. “Not an invitation to continue if it works.”

“I know the difference.”

“You often know it just before testing it.”

Mira ran a thumb over the carved address. “I’m here, Celia. Ask me.”

Celia put her pencil to the dry paper laid over the stone. “Mira Vellane, will you witness this short route from the upper quay?”

“Yes. Only the short route.”

The pencil moved. Celia kept its point inside the marks she had measured. Each grain in the paper dragged against the lead; she pressed harder to keep the stroke even. The memory of the walk came easily. A crate in her path. The chain knocking her knee. Cold rope scraping her sleeve. She drew the last fraction of an inch.

Water slipped out between two quay stones.

It did not rise from the harbor side. It ran across the six-inch line and stopped at the mooring block, where a narrow gap had opened beneath the carved address. Through it lay stone steps descending beyond the quay wall. Celia could count four before the dark hid the rest.

“It holds,” Mira whispered.

Sable's watch ticked. Celia leaned nearer. The fourth step might have a landing below it, and if she carried the line just a little farther, she could settle the question. Her pencil found the end of the stroke.

“What crate?” Mira asked.

Celia kept her hand steady. “The broken one.”

“Where was it?”

Beside the fish stairs, of course. She had stepped round it on her way here. Celia looked down at the notebook, at the plain account in her own hand. She could read every word. The rope hook, the chain against her knee, the slick stones. None of it brought back the walk. There was no path through the morning to this block.

Her pencil moved another hair's breadth.

Sable closed his hand around her wrist. “Stop.”

“The route is open.”

“I can see that.” He lifted the pencil from the paper and took it from her fingers. “Tell me how you came along the quay.”

Celia looked toward the fish stairs. She knew where they stood. She could measure the distance from here and give him the slope. “I wrote it down.”

“I asked you to tell me.”

The water drew back between the stones. The gap closed. Mira took her thumb off the address and stepped away from the block.

Celia reached for the notebook. Sable let her have it. Her account remained sharp and legible, down to the mark she had made where the rope hook stood. She could have drawn the quay from it. She could not remember walking its length.

Sable checked her grip, then asked her name, the date, and why they had come. She answered each question. His fingers stayed at her wrist longer than they needed to count a pulse.

“Will it return?” Mira asked.

“I cannot promise that,” Sable said. He looked at Celia. “You knew the walk when you began. It is gone now. More of the line may cost more than one walk, and the loss may be permanent. Another test could leave you unable to remember your own life. I will not help you make it tonight.”

Celia closed the notebook around the dry sheet so the wind would not lift it. “Six inches,” she said.

“Six inches too many,” Sable replied.

She slid the pencil into its loop without difficulty. The small motion obeyed her as it always had. Beside it, in her own neat hand, the walk along the quay remained legible. Celia read the first sentence again, and still could not recall taking a single step.