The Keeper's Key

Leah Kova woke to the smell of boiled linseed oil and the distant rattle of cranes. The workshop above the canal held the same small, stubborn geography it had for eight years: a glass pane scratched by a careless pigeon, a crooked sign that read 'Kova & Son — Repairs' though her name alone kept the place lit, a shelf of jars that caught light in thin, amber mouths. She moved like she always did—hands precise, angles measured by muscle memory—bringing a half-repaired violin closer to the window to see its grain. The wood looked almost proud under her fingers, glistening where varnish had been touched, and for a moment the city outside condensed into the curve of that belly and the promise of sound. Her thumb traced the crack in the belly and she thought of the man who had taught her to listen to wood. He was there in the scrape of the file she used, in the indifferent patience of her left hand. The city, Brinebridge, was a laddered place of iron and salt: warehouses leaning like patient beasts, lines of bunting that had survived winter storms, and the new development towers unfolding down by the harbor like knives. People called the quarter 'antique' as a polite way to say 'soon to be gone.' She kept the radio tuned low on the bench. It murmured municipal plans about 'revitalization' and 'investment' into the very air she breathed. A pot of coffee had been left to cool an hour earlier; its surface bore the film of neglect. When Lena from the bakery below pushed the door open without knocking, she entered like something that carried heat. 'Morning,' Lena said. Her voice always smelled of sugar and yeast. She leaned over the bench and peered at the violin as if she could see whole mountains within its throat. 'You still hum to them before you mend?' she asked, and Leah felt the awkward pleasure of being watched doing what she loved. 'Only when they beg,' Leah said, and the two laughed briefly. There was a photograph pinned above the vise—Leah at eighteen with her father, both grinning at an unfinished cello. The picture's edges were softened by years of ignoring dust. There were letters beneath the photograph, blue envelopes with the municipal crest. She had not opened them yet. The first tick of the day came not from the wall clock but from a small brass metronome at the edge of the bench. It measured out the ordinary: a beat, another, a universe kept in time. She wound the metronome with the heel of her hand and listened as it steadied. Outside, boots clanged on iron and someone shouted. The city kept looking for ways to rearrange everything that had a certain stubbornness to it. Leah stood, raised the violin to her shoulder, and drew the bow across a string. The note was thin and brave. It was what she could still make when the world sounded too loud to hear anything else.