Instructions for a Stranger

Celia ruled a line across the paper, then stopped before writing beneath it. The line made the page look official. An official page could be mistaken for an order.

She set down the ruler. Across the sail loft, Mira sat at the table with the Dry Impression Atlas open under a pair of weights. She kept her hands on the dry paper. Neither of them had brought a wet salt page upstairs.

“What have you got?” Mira asked.

“A list of what belongs to me.”

“That sounds short.”

“The brass chain, my instruments, Mother’s letter, the atlas. Ash’s key is in my keeping, though it does not belong to me.” Celia looked at the blank space below her line. “The rest is harder.”

Mira closed the atlas without moving the weights. “Then don’t call the rest possessions.”

Celia crossed out the heading.

Beyond the loft window, the harbor lamps burned low. The oil beacons stood ready along the quay, their glass hoods dark until the harbor needed them. A good arrangement, on paper. Every gallon had to be found and carried by someone.

She wrote a date at the top of a fresh sheet: Day 87. Then she tried again.

The first page explained the lighthouse mechanism. By the end of it, she had filled both sides with ratios and left no space for the person expected to read them. She put it with her working notes. Her future self would still know how to read a drawing. It was the reason for the work that would be gone.

On the second sheet she wrote that a completed witnessed map would take her memories of her own life, not her language or her craft. She described Lower Maren as a city with living residents, not a blank district to be surveyed. Passage required an explicit living witness at a designated address and the consent of a resident on the other side. She underlined both kinds of consent once.

Mira came to stand beside her. “You’ve written what the map does. Does it say what happens to you?”

“On the first page.”

“That page starts with the governor brake.”

“It’s relevant.”

“I know. I helped carry its drawings about.” Mira pulled out the chair beside Celia but did not sit. “Give this one the plain answer.”

Celia pressed the pen against the paper. A small spot of ink spread beneath the nib.

I may not remember having made this choice.

She left the sentence alone. Below it she wrote that Dr. Sable had found no reason to expect the lost memories to return. There was no promise to be had from rest, salt, familiar rooms, or familiar faces.

Mira read over her shoulder. Her thumb rubbed at a splinter in the chair back.

“You can stop reading,” Celia said.

“I could.” Mira sat down.

Celia drew another line, shorter this time. Under it she set out the obligations she could name. She had sent a signed deposition to the solicitor for the mining families on the mainland, with a copy of the warning she had once set aside. If they wrote, their letters deserved an answer. She had copies of evidence entrusted to her, including dry impressions that could be handled safely; original salt pages required care and did not belong to any reader merely because they had washed ashore. The atlas recorded routes and addresses, but it could not speak in place of a resident.

She wrote slowly where she had to distinguish an obligation from a command. Future Celia might choose how to answer a letter. She could not be made to feel the guilt that had led to the deposition, and the families were owed more than an account of that guilt.

“What about people?” Mira asked.

Celia turned the page. “I was coming to that.”

“No, I mean what kind of account.”

“A true one, if possible.”

Mira gave a small, tired laugh. “That leaves you plenty of room to be troublesome.”

Celia wrote Sister Ilse’s name and where to find the Unclaimed Register, with a warning that its names were not hers to disclose. She wrote that Jonah Kessler was a reporter who had kept some sources safe and failed others before learning to ask. Brenda Hale knew the boat and the machinery, and her left wrist was still healing. Dr. Sable could explain the medical risk without calling a borrowed memory madness. Lathan Vey knew the lighthouse and had ordered harm; his grief did not cancel the order. Corvin Ash had surrendered a service key, and his written account should be kept accurately, not used to clear him.

Each sentence seemed too small for a person. It was still better than leaving only a name.

She began a line about Mira, then covered it with her hand.

Mira pushed back her chair. “Let me see.”

“It isn’t finished.”

“That’s why I’m asking now.”

Celia moved her hand. The sentence read: Mira Vellane is the person I trust most. She will tell you who you are.

Mira’s face tightened. She drew the page toward herself with two fingers. “I can tell you my name.”

“That was not meant as a duty.”

“It reads as one.” Mira put the page back. “And that first part. How is she meant to answer it?”

“It is true.”

“It’s true for you.” Mira’s voice dropped, then steadied. “Don’t make a stranger prove she trusts me because you did. Don’t make me tell her she loves me, either.”

Celia reached for the pen, but Mira held it down against the table.

“I’m not saying leave me out,” Mira said. “I want to be there. I’ll come when she asks, if I can. But I won’t stand over her with a page of reasons she ought to want me.”

Celia had measured streets that vanished from every chart. Now she could not fit one honest relationship into a sentence without turning it into a claim. She looked at the ruled edge of the paper. The ink had bled through where she had pressed too hard.

“What would you permit me to write?” she asked.

“Permit?” Mira let go of the pen. “Celia.”

“Yes. Poor word.” Celia turned the page so they could both reach it. “What would you want her to know before she decides whether to speak to you?”

Mira picked a loose thread from her cuff. “That I’m Mira. That we worked together. That I know things about the routes if she wants to ask.” She paused. “That I might be upset. It won’t be her job to fix that.”

Celia wrote it down. Mira leaned in and changed might to will, then stared at the word for a while.

They worked through the rest with similar care. No one should use a remembered nickname to force familiarity. Celia could ask anyone to leave. Mira could refuse questions about her mother or her grandfather. Neither owed the other a story simply because one of them had once known it. If future Celia wanted an account of their work together, Mira would give one piece at a time, and stop when asked.

“You may also tell her I am difficult,” Celia said.

“I expect she’ll gather evidence.”

“That skill should survive.”

Mira’s mouth lifted. She reached across the table and set the pen nearer Celia, leaving her hand there for a moment. Celia took it.

Near the bottom of the sheet, Celia copied the short note they had agreed should be read first.

You are Celia Marrow. You know your tools and your craft. Do not trust an easy blank; trust only the names people gave of their own free will.

She sanded the ink and waited before folding the paper. It carried instructions, a few facts, and gaps no amount of writing could close. Mira fetched a clean envelope while Celia put her instruments in their case and laid the brass chain beside it. The links clicked against the wood, as familiar to her hand as the weight of the pen.

Mira returned with the envelope and held it open. Celia slid the note inside, then left the flap unsealed so its reader would not have to break anything to begin.