Some threads
become books.

I woke because the bells did not ring.

Memory tried to give me noise first. For years it put shouting at the start, then boots in the lane, then my mother’s hand over my mouth, then fire climbing the wall. All of that came. None of it came first. The first thing was the place where sound should have been.

Brinegate was a town of bells. The chapel bell marked prayers, deaths, weddings, and the hours when the priest remembered his duty. Ferry bells called from post to post when fog came low. Chainhouse bells spoke in iron voices over the harbor mouth. Three for boat. Nine for fire. Twelve for storm surge. A child learned those sounds before he learned which men were kind and which dogs would bite.

That night there was no bell.

I lay in the wall-bed with one cheek against the blanket and listened to the absence. Rain ticked in the pan below the roof leak. Wind found the shutter seam and made the lamp flame bow. Somewhere outside, a drunk laughed once and stopped as if someone had taken the rest of the laugh from him.

Then I heard my mother move. None of her ordinary sounds came first: bare feet crossing boards, the small cough when lamp smoke caught her throat, the sigh she gave when work had followed her home and sat beside her anyway. The bed ropes whispered. The floor answered under her heel. The latch lifted and settled again without opening.

From Masks, Chapter 1 · T Guiles