“The GEMs? They went away, every one, while they were fresh, like you.” Fran glanced at him. “You’re not so fresh now.”
“It’s always been that way?”
“When I was a girl, before Winter Heights fell, there were no GEMs. Magic brought them into the world, but the magic doesn’t want to stay. Don’t be afraid, little bird. You’ll fly to a better place.”
“Like the Mainland?” Nate asked. He knew what she meant—the room behind death, the unknown sleep—but the Mainland was easier to think about.
Fran hummed. “You like stories too.”
“Happy ones,” Nate said.
“The clouds aren’t gray on the Mainland,” Fran said. “The rain tastes sweet, and the ground is a great carpet of soft grass.”
“That’s a good story.”
“When the sludge pulls our flesh from our bones, we’ll float away to the Mainland,” Fran said.
Unsettled, Nate went silent. But the knot in his chest loosened little by little as he listened to the click-pull of Fran’s knitting. He weaved together the wires and circuits that would bring the ticker back to life. Fran liked to hold it and read the Gathos City news, even if her old eyes could barely make out the scrolling text.
“Did Alden know his mother?” Nate asked. Alden would hate him prying, but Nate’s new expiration date—and Alden’s nasty attitude earlier—made him less inclined to worry about what Alden wanted him to do or not do.
Fran continued her knitting without slowing or missing a stitch, but her lips tightened before she spoke. “He did, for a decade or so. She didn’t die well. It was here, in this house. Alden wasn’t well after that. He takes his medicine now, so he won’t be thinking about her.”
It was rare to get such a lucid streak out of Fran, so Nate pressed on. “What about his father?”
“Never a father around here. My Alba was an independent girl. She inherited this shop from my husband after Alden came along. He’s never known anything but this place. He was only a boy when he took on Alba’s work.”
Nate tried to picture a child in the shop with no one but an eccentric old woman to keep him company. He snorted, realizing it wasn’t all that different from his childhood with Bernice.
“Grandmother.” Alden peered through the doorway. “Are you troubling our young Tinkerer?”
“Areyoutroubling him?” Fran asked.
Nate laughed. “I’ve just finished up. Here you are.”
He scrambled up and tucked the ticker against the folds of quilted fabric that covered her from the waist down where she reclined on the bed like a moth-eaten queen. She placed a warm, leathery hand over his and smiled.
“It’s still not working,” she said.
Nate leaned over her and squinted at the ticker, frowning. Fixing a ticker was child’s play. “It looks all right to me,” he said, nodding toward the scrolling words. Then he looked closer.
The Breakers will catch you when you fall.
It repeated in a loop. Nate squinted at it, trying to make sense of the message. Maybe it really was broken.
He reached for the ticker, and a normal broadcast resumed. Food ration delivery times and weather alerts and decades-old lung-rot symptom warnings scrolled by.
“Can you fly, pretty bird?” Fran asked.
“She’s off again,” Alden said at Nate’s ear, making him jump. Fran watched them vacantly, her gnarled fingers continuing to knit the orange scarf for Alden.
They settled Fran’s blankets together and cranked the light beside her bed to keep it going while she finished her knitting. She’d sleep soon, her wasted body exhausted even by lounging in bed.
“She told me she’s going to die,” Nate said.
“She’s been saying that for six years. I have a pile of scarves to prove it. Come on,” Alden said, taking Nate’s hand and leading him out of the room. “You need to eat something.”
They sat behind the counter with crunchy bread that tasted more like ash than usual. Alden broke pieces off and ate them delicately, glancing at Nate between bites.
