Chapter 3: The Second Rope

Before the lamps were lit, Edda Vell stood on the north ledge with the rope in her hands. The quarry lay below her, black water under a thin skin of dawn. She lowered the knotted line until it stopped. Then she pulled it up, wiped the wet knots on her sleeve, and lowered it again.

The water had climbed two knots since the last morning she had marked it. It had climbed two in the week before as well.

Edda wrapped the rope around her wrist. She looked toward the sheds. No boy waited there now. The cutting sheds showed only their open mouths and the pale edges of carts.

She went down the path to the quarry floor.

The pump stood beside the flooded cutting, its iron handle bent toward the water. Edda put her hand on it. The metal was warm almost to her elbow. Water shone in the cylinder below, though nobody had worked the handle and no bucket had fed it.

“Show me what you want,” she said.

The pump gave no answer. A drop fell from the end of its spout and struck the stone.

Edda drew back. Across the floor, a length of rope lay against the north wall. She knew every rope Carrow had sent. This one was not hers. It was wet, darkened through, and had been laid in a loose coil where the water could reach it.

She took it up. There was no knot at its end, only a frayed twist that smelled of the quarry.

At the ropewalk, the Widow Carrow was making a fence of the new order. Coils filled the yard, and men carried them toward the road. Carrow sat at her table under the awning. Her book was open. Beside the columns where she wrote lengths, she had ruled another column and filled it with names.

“You have written mine,” Edda said.

“I have written yours before,” said Carrow. “This is the first time I have put it where the council can see it.”

Edda set the wet rope on the table. “Did you send this?”

Carrow’s smile vanished. “No.”

“Then who did?”

“If I knew, I would write the name.” Carrow touched the new column with one finger. “They want enough rope to close every path down. A fence will keep fools from the edge. It will not keep water in its hole.”

“The council thinks a fence is an answer.”

“The council thinks a written thing is an answer.”

Carrow lifted the wet rope and squeezed it. Water ran onto the page, crossing two names and making their ink bleed together.

“You owe me for this order,” she said. “Pay me with the truth you have.”

Edda looked at the book. “The water rose two knots this week.”

Carrow did not move.

“Say it again,” she said.

“Two knots.”

Carrow wrote it in the margin, not under any name. “Then the fence must be finished today.”

At noon, a cart came up from the valley. The cart-man sat high on the board and held a black stone in his lap. When he saw Edda, he called for more stones. He had come back asking who had found them, and he offered a price that made the quarrymen turn their heads.

Loak watched from behind the cutting shed. Three black stones rested under the straw at his feet. He had kept them there since the night he stopped following Edda. His hands knew their weight. The smallest was heavier than a mallet head.

The cart-man climbed down. “You have more,” he said.

Loak said nothing.

“The one I bought cracked in my hand,” the man said. “There was no heart in it. It was dry inside.”

Loak pushed one stone deeper into the straw with his toe.

The cart-man came nearer. “A boy who belongs nowhere can sell what he finds.”

Loak picked up a broken plank. “A man who comes twice can leave twice.”

The man laughed, but he stepped back from the shed.

That evening, the council’s rope went up along the quarry road. Men drove stakes into the ground. Carrow stood among them, giving out lengths. Edda saw that the fence left a narrow gap beside the old pump path.

“Why leave that?” Edda asked.

Carrow kept her eyes on the rope. “Because the pump path is already under water.”

“It was dry this morning.”

“It is not morning now.”

The lower town bells rang for the lamps. Far below, the pump knocked once. Then twice. Then a third time. Dogs answered from the houses, one after another, until the sound climbed the hill.

Sol sat at the top of the quarry road, pressed against the first stake. A woman set down a bowl before him. He did not look at it. When Edda called, he showed his teeth, not at her, but at the dark road below.

The councilmen backed away from the fence. One said the stone had shifted. Another said it was only the dogs. No one went down to see.

Edda took a lamp from the nearest post and covered its flame with her hand. She went through the gap.

“Edda,” Carrow said.

“Stay with the rope.”

“The rope is not the thing I am afraid of.”

Edda crossed the quarry floor. The water had reached the pump’s lower bolts. Its handle moved once without a hand on it, a small lift and fall. She held the lamp close. Water trembled in the cylinder.

From the cutting sheds came a soft scrape. Loak stepped out with his shuttered lamp. He had been at the waterline after midnight, and the mud on his boots was still black.

“You stopped following me,” Edda said.

“You went where I could not go.”

“You should not have gone there alone.”

“I was not alone.”

He pointed to the water. A second rope ran from the ledge above them into the flooded cut. It was wet from end to end. The lower part vanished beneath the surface.

Edda raised her lamp. The rope pulled tight.

“Who holds it?” Loak asked.

“No one that I can see.”

The pump knocked again. Its cylinder gave a hollow cough, and a thin stream spilled over the stone floor. It ran around Edda’s boots and toward the fence.

Carrow came through the gap carrying her book. She stopped beside them. Sol remained above, guarding the road.

“Write this,” Edda said.

Carrow opened the book. “What name?”

Edda looked at the rope disappearing into the black water. “Not a name. The level.”

Carrow wrote while the stream widened. Loak held the shutter of his lamp open a finger’s breadth. The light fell on the pump, the three stones hidden under his coat, and the wet rope rising from the water into the dark.

By dawn, the fence stood complete around the quarry. No one crossed it. On the north ledge, Edda’s rope lay beside the other rope, and both were wet. Between them, the first pale light gathered in the beads of water, one bead on each knot.

attribution

{"used":["p01","p02","p03","p04","p05","p06","p07","p08","p09","p10","p13","p16"],"appeared":["Edda Vell","Loak","Widow Carrow","the Pump","Sol"],"changed":[{"name":"Edda Vell","how":"She learns the water is rising by two knots and chooses to record the level openly at the pump."},{"name":"Loak","how":"He keeps three black stones and joins Edda at the waterline instead of following her from a distance."},{"name":"Widow Carrow","how":"She begins recording names and carries the level into the council's written account."},{"name":"the Pump","how":"Its warmth, water, and knocking coincide with a stream flowing across the quarry floor."},{"name":"Sol","how":"He holds the top of the quarry road and refuses food while the lower road sounds."}],"died":[],"refused":["p11","p12","p14","p15"],"title":"The Second Rope"}

plate

Black ink on paper, an etching in three-quarter views: Edda stands at the flooded quarry floor with a shuttered lamp held near the warm old pump, Loak beside her with one hand on his lamp and the hidden stones under his coat, and the Widow Carrow behind them holding her open book; the second wet rope rises from the black water toward the unseen north ledge, while the newly staked fence and Sol at the road’s top occupy the background, with pale dawn entering from above and the lamp making the only hard light on stone, rope, hands, and water.