The Wayward Portal · Story 4 · A Strangewoven story
The Wayward Portal — Read in order
1. The Wayward Portal · 2. The Things That Stayed · 3. The Upper Crossing · 4. The Keeper’s Table
A story from Strangewoven
Helen had packed enough lunch for six people.
There were four of them.
“We might meet someone,” she said.
Aren looked at the bag, then at the unfamiliar town in Daniel’s photographs.
“That seems a sound basis for diplomacy.”
Daniel added a flask of water.
“Try not to promise anyone a refrigerator.”
Aven closed her notebook.
“We don’t know how to make one.”
“That didn’t seem to discourage your brother last night.”
Aren took the lunch bag.
“I proposed research.”
They spent the morning at the upper crossing.
The bronze mechanism remained clean and free. No new sediment had gathered beneath the float. The outlet carried the small continuing seep into the gully.
With daylight and a better view beneath the lever, Aven found a second catch. It engaged only when the basin was low and the main lever moved into the third position.
The symbol above it resembled descending steps.
“We thought that meant falling water,” she said.
Aren crouched beside her.
Under the plate, a worn inscription emerged as she brushed the dirt away.
“‘For passage,’” she read. “‘Set and prove.’”
Daniel folded his arms.
“Somebody liked giving instructions.”
“I’m growing quite fond of them,” Aren said.
The catch held the lowered slab in place without relying on the float. They tested it, closed the arch, opened it again, and watched the mechanism through a change in water level.
The doorway stayed open.
Beyond it, the pond lay below the overflow lip. A narrow walkway ran along one side of the water channel, leading onto the terrace they had seen the day before.
Aven stood with her notebook open.
“The automatic position is for water. This one is for people.”
“And someone on the other side can release it?” Helen asked.
Aren pointed through the arch. A matching bronze handle stood within reach of the far threshold.
He had been watching its movement as they worked.
“We’ll test that too.”
They did, with Aven remaining beside the Washington mechanism while Aren checked the far handle. Only when both twins were satisfied did the four of them gather beside the arch.
Helen adjusted the strap of her bag.
“Well. I’ve spent thirty-two years getting Daniel to take a proper holiday.”
“This wasn’t what I had in mind,” he said.
“You rarely have anything in mind. That’s been the difficulty.”
She took his hand and stepped through with him.
On the terrace, Helen turned slowly.
Behind her stood a Washington ravine under gray cloud. Ahead lay a bright hillside beneath a pale blue sky.
She put one hand against the arch.
“I thought I understood because Danny told me.”
Daniel nodded.
The twins let them look.
Aren examined the terrace while Aven checked the return handle herself. The ruined building nearby had once contained benches, shelves, and what appeared to be a stone hearth. Rain had entered through its fallen roof for many seasons.
Beside the entrance, partly sheltered by the remaining eaves, hung a bell.
Aven looked at Aren.
He studied the bell, then the path leading uphill.
She rang it once.
Its note carried clearly over the pond.
They waited.
Nothing moved among the pale trees.
“Perhaps nobody comes here anymore,” Daniel said.
Then, from farther uphill, a voice called something impatient in the twins’ language.
Aven answered.
The voice stopped.
After a moment, it called again.
“Did you ring that?”
“Yes.”
“Stay there.”
Helen looked from one twin to the other.
“Good news?”
“Possibly,” Aren said.
The woman who appeared on the path carried a pruning hook and a bundle of cut branches.
She was short, broad through the shoulders, and gray-haired beneath a faded head scarf. Copper spectacles sat low on a blunt nose. A leather apron protected her knees.
She looked at the twins.
Then at Daniel and Helen.
Then at the open arch.
Her branches fell to the ground.
“Oh,” she said.
She walked past them and knelt beside the basin, examining the flow. Then she inspected the catch, the platform, and the fresh marks left by their cleaning.
Only after that did she stand.
“Who worked on the far housing?”
Aren raised a hand.
Aven raised hers.
The woman looked between them.
“Both?”
“Usually,” Aven said.
The woman put down her pruning hook.
“I’m Bessa. You’d better tell me what you’ve done.”
Explaining took some time.
The twins spoke their valley’s language with Bessa, then translated for Daniel and Helen. Bessa understood them easily enough, although she occasionally used a term neither twin recognized.
When Aren described the bent bronze pin, she shook her head.
“The keeper here reported that catch sticking when I was an apprentice.”
“How long ago?” Aven asked.
“Thirty years. More.”
Daniel waited for the translation.
“That explains the wear,” he said.
Bessa studied his clothes.
“You live on the far side?”
“Yes.”
“And there are people there still?”
Daniel looked at the twins.
Aren translated again, carefully.
“Quite a few,” Daniel said.
Bessa took off her spectacles and cleaned them on her scarf.
“We’ve a table at the keeper’s house,” she said. “We should sit down.”
The town was called Istren.
It stood eleven days from Veyr by the hill road, Bessa told them. Twelve with a laden cart.
Aren stopped walking.
Aven stopped beside him.
They looked back toward the pond.
“The entrances in Washington,” she said quietly. “Less than an afternoon apart.”
“And here, nearly two weeks.”
Daniel watched them.
“Useful shortcut?”
“Potentially,” Aren said.
Aven touched his elbow before he could begin calculating.
Bessa had continued uphill.
They followed.
The blue roofs were glazed tiles, each slightly different from its neighbors. Their color deepened where clouds cast shadows over the ridge. Water ran through little stone gutters beside the streets.
People looked at the visitors, especially Daniel’s jacket and Helen’s shoes. A child waved. Helen waved back.
Outside a bakery, a tall man with pointed ears was arguing with a stocky woman over the proper depth of a pie dish.
Aven listened for a moment.
“We may be among our own people,” she told Aren.
He glanced at the pastries in the window.
“We should establish that thoroughly.”
The keeper’s house stood beside a square cistern.
Its roof was sound. Its front door had swollen in the frame.
Bessa lifted the latch, leaned her shoulder into it, and entered with the air of someone refusing to concede an old argument.
Inside stood a long table, a stove, and shelves of ledgers.
Four hooks held heavy coats. Most were dusty.
“How many keepers work here?” Aven asked.
“Me.”
Bessa set a kettle on the stove.
“Those belonged to the others.”
“Where did they go?”
“One died. One moved nearer her daughter. One found work that paid regularly.”
She began clearing papers from the table.
Helen put down the lunch bag and started helping.
“Ask where she keeps the plates,” she told Aven.
Bessa watched the sandwiches appear.
For the first time since they had met her, she smiled.
The keepers had maintained more than doorways.
Bessa showed them records of channels, roads, bridges, and stopping places. Some passages carried travelers. Others relieved flooded basins or supplied water where it was needed.
“The arches themselves?” Aren asked. “Do you know how they were made?”
“No.”
“Who built them?”
“No.”
“How—”
“I’m going to disappoint you a great deal if you continue in that direction.”
Aven hid a smile behind her cup.
Bessa opened a ledger.
“I can tell you how to look after what surrounds them. Which channels must stay clear. Which catches need checking. How to close a way that isn’t fit to use.”
“And reopen one?”
“Sometimes.”
She looked at the twins’ stained hands.
“Apparently you can too.”
The twins showed her drawings of the lower passage.
Bessa frowned at the cracked lintel, then at the notation Aven had made beside it.
“Veyr?”
“Our home,” Aren said.
“And that is open?”
“Yes.”
She rose so quickly that her chair scraped the floor.
At the shelves, she examined several ledger spines, removed one, replaced it, then stood looking at the upper row.
Aven stepped beside her.
“Which?”
“Brown binding. Split at the bottom.”
Aven handed it down.
Bessa carried the book to the table and searched its index.
Daniel looked at Helen.
She pushed his untouched sandwich toward him.
“We may be here a while.”
The entry was brief.
Veyr western foot. Rockfall. Passage inaccessible. Work beyond capacity of local crew.
Below it lay a series of later notes.
Requests for inspection. A visit that confirmed the damage. A proposed repair whose list of materials filled half a page.
Then, in different handwriting:
Petition renewed by Rose of Veyr. Seeks return to place of birth.
Aven stopped translating.
Aren read the line beside her.
Daniel leaned forward.
“What?”
She told him.
He put down his cup.
Bessa turned the page.
There were more requests.
Some were years apart. The final one bore a date from shortly before the twins were born.
“Grandma said they kept looking,” Aren said.
Aven remembered Rose at the garden table, describing the man who returned with tools after her branch broke.
He had come this far with her.
Eleven days over the hills to ask again.
“I wasn’t responsible for those decisions,” Bessa said quietly. “But that doesn’t make this pleasant reading.”
Daniel waited until Aven translated.
“No,” he said. “It wouldn’t.”
They read the repair proposal together.
Its author had understood the trouble. The estimate called for supports, lifting gear, drainage work, and a crew larger than the keepers could spare.
Later notes recorded repairs to a flooded village road and a failed supply channel elsewhere. Rose’s passage remained on the list.
Eventually there were no more notes.
Aren looked toward the dusty coats.
The silence lasted until Helen asked a question.
“Can Rose have a copy?”
Bessa nodded immediately.
“Of course.”
Daniel took photographs of the pages. Aren began copying the repair drawing, marking where their own work differed.
Aven looked at him.
He tapped the blank space beside the last entry.
She understood.
“May we add something?” she asked Bessa.
The keeper turned the ledger toward her.
The new entry took several attempts.
Aren wanted measurements. Aven wanted names. Bessa insisted on both and supplied the proper form.
Daniel watched Aven write.
“What does that part say?”
“‘Passage reopened. Lintel supported. Watercourse restored. Further inspection scheduled.’”
She moved down a line.
“‘Rose of Veyr has crossed safely and returned.’”
Daniel nodded.
He reached for his cup, then left it where it was.
“Good.”
Bessa waited until the ink dried before closing the book.
“There,” she said.
They returned to the terrace with Bessa carrying a narrow case of tools.
She inspected both sides of the upper crossing, including the cleared outlet in Washington. She said little while she worked, occasionally asking why they had made a particular choice.
The twins answered. Once, Aren began an explanation at the same moment Aven did. They both stopped.
Bessa looked up.
“Either will do.”
“He’ll draw it,” Aven said.
“She’ll tell you which parts of the drawing are wrong.”
“Useful,” Bessa said, and returned to the catch.
When she finished, she showed them how to check a concealed bearing they had missed. Then she demonstrated the service latch again, explaining the slight movement they should feel before the catch seated fully.
Aven practiced until she could recognize it without looking.
Aren did the same.
“You can read a description and still not know that,” he said.
“Yes,” Bessa replied. “That’s why we had apprentices.”
She packed her tools.
“Would you like visitors next week?” Aven asked.
Bessa studied her for a moment.
“Bring your drawings.”
“And lunch,” Helen said when the offer was translated.
Bessa smiled.
“Yes. Bring her too.”
Rose was waiting at Daniel’s house when they returned.
She had spent the afternoon with his daughter. There were new photographs on the table and a list of names written in Rose’s careful hand.
“Well?” she asked.
Aven sat beside her.
“The town is called Istren.”
Rose nodded slowly.
“I remember that name.”
“You went there with Granddad.”
Rose’s eyes moved to the copied pages Aren was taking from his bag.
“Yes.”
“We met the keeper.”
For a moment, Rose looked much older than she had that morning.
“They were kind,” she said. “They never promised what they couldn’t do. I tried to remember that.”
Aren laid the copies in front of her.
She touched the old repair drawing. The requests. A few words in the margin.
“He wrote that,” she said.
Her husband had added a measurement the inspecting keeper had missed. Beneath it, he had offered to supply part of the timber himself.
Rose smiled at the handwriting.
“He always said their estimate was too high.”
Aven placed the newest page on top.
Rose read it without speaking.
Then she read it again.
Daniel stood behind her chair, one hand resting on its back.
“They’ve changed the entry,” he said.
Rose covered Aven’s hand with hers.
“I see.”
Later, while Helen prepared supper, the twins spread a borrowed route map across the table.
Bessa had marked the upper terrace, the town, and the hill road to Veyr. Several other routes ended in question marks.
Aren studied one of them.
Aven watched him, then placed a blank sheet beside his elbow.
He looked up.
“What’s that for?”
“The mechanism you’re about to invent.”
“I might simply be admiring the map.”
She waited.
He picked up his pencil.
Across the room, Rose was telling Daniel about the eleven-day walk she and her husband had once made over the hills. This time she remembered the inn with the crooked stairs, and the baker who gave them food for the road.
Helen set two more places at the table.
The twins rolled up the map before supper.
