A Good Catch

Marta Quillon came whistling up the dark stretch at dusk and saw the lamp fall off the ninth post.

Fergal Brack was already moving. The lamp landed in Fergal’s two hands a hand’s width above the road, hot and still lit. On the post above, a sorry-looking hook hung bent wide open.

“Good catch,” Marta said.

Marta is a Drifter, and keeps unclaimed roads walked so they stay put. This week Marta’s road was the field edge between the Parks and the Gardens, a little path that drifts if it goes a week unwalked. Marta does everything a bit wrong, on purpose, so it’s known at a glance: the whistle, the coat of seven patches, the walk. Tonight was only a shortcut through on the way there.

Fergal stood holding the lamp with their heart going hard, and Marta could see it in their shoulders. That morning a yawning sweeper on the avenue told Marta that Fergal held a lamp up at this post all Saturday night.

“You’ve still got the good one in your coat,” Marta said.

“That’s for the Sedge Posts,” Fergal said.

“Then you need another hook. The Make-Do Bench at Fort Flex will bend you one out of scrap.”

Fergal glanced at the open hook, and at the lamp, and at the pair of walkers waiting a few steps off, too polite to say they were cold. Marta has passed Fergal on this road for years and never once heard Fergal ask anyone for a thing.

The Flex yards were the other way, a whole night there and back. If Marta went, the field edge would go unwalked, and a path Marta had kept alive since spring might be grass by Friday.

“I’m walking to the Flex yards tonight,” Marta said. “That’s who I am this week. Coming?”

Fergal could not come; Fergal was a hook tonight. Marta watched them work out what to say, and how much it would cost to say it.

“Bring me one back,” Fergal said at last. “Please. A straight one.”

Marta grinned and turned round on the road, away from the field edge, toward the yards. They whistled as they went, wrong on every note, already thinking about the hook.

“A straight one!” Fergal called after them.

The whistle went up at the end, which might have meant yes.