Loom of Names

Elin woke to the band's hum like a distant storm. It lay against her collarbone, a thin rim of pale light that pulsed in time with the city. In the narrow room above the alleys, the smell of oil and boiled metal seeped through cracks in the shutter. Outside, the morning bands slid along the facades, painting windows with tidy rectangles of instruction. Someone down the way was already beating a tin can to call for scrap; the sound hit her like a promise she had neither wanted nor earned.

She dressed by memory: a patched jacket over a threadbare weave, boots that had once been black, a scarf that smelled faintly of lemon oil because Toma had stolen the last strip of citrus from a market bench and rubbed it into his palms like an offering. Her hands moved like they always had, gathering tools from under the floorboard. A coil of wire, a blunt prong, a small can of adhesive gel—objects that belonged to her trade. She was a mender of signals, a repairer of the thin conduits that kept neighborhoods lit and talkable. It was work that required a steady wrist and a willingness to ignore the registry's notices.

Toma was asleep on the roll beside her. He had the heavy blanket of a child who believed in the safety of roofs and other people's stories. His hair sprang in mismatched tufts, and one corner of his mouth quirked when he dreamed of drums. Elin touched his forehead. He was warm. She felt the familiar small reassurance in the hollow under her ribs, that ache of responsibility that kept her walking between towers when everyone else stayed home.

They lived in the lower belts, where the light from the Spires bled and tasted like rust. The belts were full of people who had answers in their pockets and losses that looked new on their faces. On the way to the street she passed through neighbors who traded in small faults—an axle, a fuse, the husk of a radio. Voices were soft here, because loudness could pull attention. The registry's drones drifted overhead like exhausted gulls, thin arms scraping the dirt.

On the platform outside the stairwell, a notice burned blue across the brick—a projected strip of law that hissed at the air in a polite voice and showed a face Elin did not know. It was the usual: names to be reassigned, household quotas to be inspected. Her fingers tightened around the strap of her bag. She had long ago learned how to read the registry's mood by the angle of the light. Today's strip flickered and pulsed in a way that made her think of storms gathering far away. She stepped into the street and the band at her collar pulsed once, brighter, as if tapping her on the shoulder. She kept walking. There is always the repair to be done.