Some stories begin
before this lifetime.

Chapter One · The way down

Eliana had sewn the coin into her sister’s hem, where their father would never think to look. Now Lucia stood on the kitchen table while Eliana made a great business of trimming a thread. Neither of them had mentioned the boat.

“You’ve made it crooked,” Lucia said.

“Then walk quickly.”

Her sister laughed. There it was, the sound Eliana had been trying to coax from her all morning. She bent to bite the thread and stayed bent a moment longer than she needed.

Outside, the harbor bells began. Their father called from his map room for fresh water. Eliana took the jug, filled it, and set it beside his elbow. He was tracing the coast with the little finger he had broken as a boy. She knew every movement of that hand. She could tell his mood by the weight of it on the paper.

“Your sister’s quiet today,” he said.

“She’s thinking.”

He grunted, as though thinking were a habit a girl would recover from. Eliana picked up his empty cup and, for the first time she could remember, left the room before he had finished speaking.

The Cartographer of Forgotten Stars

At the top of the harbor steps, Lucia stopped. Her bag contained two dresses, a comb with three missing teeth, and the address of a woman who had promised her work. Eliana had written the address twice, once on paper and once on the lining of the bag.

“You could come,” Lucia said.

Below them, a sailor was trying to persuade a small donkey onto a gangplank. The donkey had planted all four feet. Eliana watched it with unreasonable tenderness.

“Someone has to keep him fed.”

“He knows where the bread is.”

There were answers Eliana could have given. His eyes were failing. The accounts needed doing. Winter would come. She had rehearsed them while she sewed. In her sister’s presence they sounded like things somebody else had put in her mouth.

Lucia reached for her hand. “I’ll miss you even when I’m happy. You understand that?”

Eliana nodded too soon.

“You’re allowed to be happy as well.”

A gust lifted the edge of Lucia’s skirt. The hidden coin tapped against the stone, a tiny, unmistakable sound. Lucia looked down, then back at her sister. For once she let Eliana’s kindness stand without a joke to cover it.

They went down together. At the quay, Eliana straightened the collar she had already straightened three times. Lucia caught her fingers and kissed them.

Long after the boat had cleared the harbor, Eliana remained beside the mooring ring. She could go home by the market and buy what her father expected for supper. Instead she took the narrow street behind the rope-maker’s shop. At its far end was a bookseller who sometimes bought drawings.

She had one folded inside her sleeve. A map of a harbor she had never visited, drawn so often that she knew where the morning light would fall.