Beast called Martiny had a stack of empty bowls on one arm and the apron half unfolded before anyone asked them to carry anything. Steam came off the Forever Pot in a thick white column. The queue shuffled past it, stamping against the cold.

Hilde Arnesen did the ladling. They were an Original, and they looked about as old as the pot. They gave orders one word at a time. “Bowls.” “Spoons.” “You. Eat.”

That last one was for Beast called Martiny. They took the bowl Hilde held out and started to say where they’d come from. Hilde pointed at the broth. Beast called Martiny ate first, the way you did here. It was barley and something smoky, and it was gone before they’d noticed how hungry they were.

The crowd around the pot was getting restless, in a good way. Someone had a barrow handle over each shoulder. A Beast with flour on their sleeves explained it was Barrow Morning. Everyone walked out to the Grove together and filled the barrows, and nobody came home until it was done. Beast called Martiny wanted that badly. They wanted to be one of a hundred feet on that road, and to know whose laugh was whose by the end of it.

Hilde tasted the pot from a wooden ladle and made a face. “Wrong spoon.”

A Koala in a long cardigan drifted over with a cup of broth. This was Wenna Quinlan, who kept the Kettle Counter.

“Their spoon’s out on the road,” Wenna said, as if it were the weather. “A runner stirred last night’s road pot with it and left the lot at a post past where the lamps stop. The number’s chalked on the lid. That lamp stayed dark.”

“It’ll keep,” Hilde said.

“It won’t,” said Wenna. “A jug of Cortado cordial says it isn’t back on the Pass before the road pots go out at dusk.”

Hilde gave them a long look. “Against a first bowl.”

“Done.”

Neither of them looked at Beast called Martiny. Hilde didn’t ask. Somehow that was worse.

The barrows rattled and the crowd began to move. Someone started a song with too many verses. Beast called Martiny went with them, past the stalls and the steam, and they were laughing before they knew why. At the corner the crowd’s road bent left, wide and bright. A narrow lane ran off to the right between two walls, toward the old road.

They had always liked a side lane. They hadn’t expected to hate one.

Beast called Martiny folded the apron, tucked it under one arm, and turned right. Behind them the song got smaller, then thinner, then went.

The lane came out onto the old road just past the last lit lamp. After that the posts carried empty hooks. The colour had gone off the stones and off the posts, like cloth washed too many times, and the quiet pressed in until they could hear their own breath inside the balaclava. They thought about the Grove, and the barrows, and all the names they wouldn’t learn this morning. Their feet kept going anyway.

Far ahead, small and grey on the verge, something round sat under a post with no light in it.

Dusk was a long way off. Wenna hadn’t looked worried at all.