Otis Rain and the Songwheel of Tallpalm

Otis Rain kept his workshop at the very edge of Tallpalm Harbour, where the houses leaned in to listen to the sea. The room smelled of cedar shavings and lemon oil, and the window always wore a ring of salty fog. Otis liked the smallest things most of all: the tick of a brass hinge, the tiny cool weight of a sewing needle, the lopsided grin of a wooden boat he had carved for a child down the lane. On the workbench a thin trail of blue soot curled like a sleepy snail, and at Otis's elbow the little mechanical gull, Pip, clicked its beak when it wanted attention.

Pip had been Otis's first proper invention. It was made from clock springs and a shell of painted tin. Its single glass eye glowed with a soft map of light that pointed toward the nearest sound. Otis wound Pip with a ribbon and taught it to peck at a brass bell when the kettle boiled. That made Pip very pleased.

Outside, Tallpalm woke up in a busy, noisy way. Fisherfolk threaded smells of tar and orange marmalade through their baskets. The bakery threw warm sugar into the street and the market sellers had voices like bright fish, bumping and flashing with each sale. The lighthouse of Tallpalm was not only a light; it was a Songwheel, an old round thing of wood and carved strings that sang to the boats so they could find the harbor by melody during fog. Old Maren, the keeper, had been humming to the wheel since before Otis was born. Her song was all the children learned to whistle.

Otis liked to sit at the window of his workshop and watch Maren lift and lower the Songwheel chords with gloves that smelled of lavender. The sea and the wheel and the town's rattle felt like a warm blanket wrapped around everyone. On mornings like that, Otis would finish a tiny cog, wipe his hands on his trousers, and go out with Pip to trade a repaired hinge for a pot of tea and a story about a faraway island.

He did not notice the first thing that slipped away. It was the gull’s caw that stopped halfway, a sharp question that folded itself up and vanished. Otis heard Pip click, then a second click as if the gull were surprised. He set his file down and pushed the window open wider, expecting the harbor's ringing chorus. Instead, there was a hollow that felt like someone had put a mitten over the town’s mouth. Even the sea seemed to draw its breath and hold it.

Otis frowned and cupped his hands to his ears in a way that felt silly even to him. He listened for the bakery boy’s whistle. Nothing. He walked barefoot across the plank floor so his steps would not startle anyone, and he felt the house creak the way it always did, but where sound should be there was an empty, thin thread. "Something's wrong," he said aloud, and his voice came back to him as a small lonely echo. Pip pecked his wrist and made a little light in its eye as if to say, "We should check."