From a story idea
to a book.

Mara woke with her cheek against wet floorboards and her work bag sliding away from her.

She caught its strap. Above her, sheets hung at an angle that made no sense until she realized the room was tilting.

“Don’t stand up,” someone called. “It’s going again.”

The floor moved beneath her hip.

At the low end of the room, daylight showed around a crooked doorway. Beyond it was a wooden street, a railing, and a strip of blue too bright to be the car park she remembered crossing. A hammer struck beneath the floor. Another blow followed, then a man shouted, “Back. Off the staging!”

Something scraped underneath Mara, slow and heavy.

She got onto her knees.

Wash tubs lined the uphill wall. Laundry racks crowded the space between her and the door, their wheels chocked with scraps of wood. Beyond the nearest rack, a young man in a damp apron had both shoulders pressed against a leaning trolley. Its load of wet linen bulged above his head.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“Then stay low.”

He spoke perfectly ordinary words. She clung to that while the room shifted again.

Through the doorway she saw workers scrambling up a ladder from below the street. One carried a timber prop; another had dropped a mallet and was dragging a coil of rope. They hurried away to her right.

The young man behind the trolley grunted. A wheel skidded.

Mara put her bag strap across her body and crawled toward him instead.

“Door’s the other way,” he said.

“I can see that. Where are you caught?”

“Not caught. Holding this off the rack. If the rack goes over, we get to live here.”

She reached the trolley’s downhill corner. His bare feet were planted against a wash-tub pedestal; without that support, she thought the whole load would have pushed him across the floor.

“Tell me what you need.”

“Lift that wheel over the batten. Don’t pull toward you.”

Together they got the wheel across the strip of wood nailed to the floor. He let the trolley roll sideways until its lower corner struck the pedestal. It settled there with a thump.

For a moment they simply breathed.

“I’m Tavi.”

“Mara. Where are we?”

“The public washhouse.”

“What town?”

He looked at her properly then, taking in her jacket, her shoes, the plastic clasp on her bag.

“Latch.”

She knew no Latch.

A dry crack came from the entrance. Its left upright peeled away from the wall, opening a narrow triangle of light. The beam across the top sagged.

Tavi looked past her.

“We need that door.”

“I’ll hold it while you clear the way.”

It came out in the reassuring voice she used with tenants waiting beneath leaking ceilings. She had offered to sort things out so often that the offer sometimes arrived before she knew what the problem was.

Here there was no contractor to call.

She crawled down the sloping aisle and reached for the exposed joint where the upright met the low threshold.

The instant her palm touched the wood, a pale line shone beneath it.

Mara snatched her hand away.

The line vanished.

“What?” Tavi asked.

“There’s something in the wood.”

He was dragging loose sheets from the trolley’s wheels. “Teeth?”

“Light.”

His hands stopped.

Mara touched the joint again.

She felt the pieces separately: the upright pressing down, the threshold resisting, the joint trying to open as the wall leaned outward. The sensation had no place in her hand. It was more like suddenly knowing which tooth hurt.

When she blinked, words remained against her closed eyelids.

Joinery.

Unclaimed connection.

Accept entry?

She opened her eyes. The joint was still coming apart.

“It’s asking me something.”

“Joinery?”

“Yes.”

“Then you can take it.”

“What does that mean?”

“You can learn to hold things.”

“Can I stop afterward?”

“I don’t know. I was born here. It never asked me.”

A scrape travelled up the outside wall. Something hard tapped the boards beside Mara’s head.

She pressed her palm flat.

Yes.

[STATUS] Mara — Rank 1

For a heartbeat she could not see the washhouse. There was a small, clear ledger against the darkness of her closed eyes. Seam was written beside her new rank. Capacity was 2, both places empty. Beneath a heading for proven techniques there was nothing.

No instructions filled her head. She was still kneeling in a collapsing laundry, with no idea how much timber a doorway could carry.

“What did it give you?” Tavi asked.

“Seam. Two capacity. No techniques.”

“Two connections you can keep working. If you learn one.”

“If?”

The scraping stopped.

A hooked leg reached around the doorpost.

Mara recoiled so hard that her bag struck the floor behind her. The leg bent at sharp joints and ended in a dark claw. Another followed, then a broad, ridged body hauled itself into view beneath the lintel.

It was the size of a laundry basket. Its shell looked like wet roof slate.

“Borer,” Tavi said. “Move away from the sheets.”

Mara had never fought anything larger than a wasp. She searched uselessly for something with a long handle.

The animal caught a hanging sheet with its forelegs. Cloth tightened across the entrance. As it dragged itself higher, the lintel dipped and the opening above Mara’s hand widened.

“Don’t hit it,” Tavi said. “It’ll pull.”

“Wasn’t planning to get that close.”

A voice came from outside, low and firm.

“You at the door. Is that your seam?”

An older man stood on the deck beyond the threshold, clear of the hanging cloth. He carried a short pry bar with a padded grip. His fingers lay stiffly around it.

“I’ve only just—”

“Then listen. I’m Esken, the joiner. What are you touching?”

“The bottom of the doorframe.”

“Which parts?”

She made herself look. “The upright. The piece across the floor.”

“The sill. Where does the upright’s weight go?”

“Into the sill.”

“And beneath it?”

From here she could see the sill resting on a thicker beam where a floorboard had lifted. The beam continued out beneath the doorway to the deck.

“A beam.”

“Can you reach it?”

She slid her fingers along the exposed edge. The strange awareness followed her touch, confined to what she explored. Firm wood. Pressure. No answer about the hidden lengths beyond her fingers.

Esken crouched outside, looking beneath the threshold.

“That end’s seated,” he said. “Keep your foot against the upright. Don’t try to lift the roof.”

“I’m not an engineer.”

“Good. Tell me when you don’t know.”

The borer shifted. Its shell scraped the lintel, and Mara felt the joint tug against her palm.

“Keep those faces together,” Esken said. “That’s Hold. The wood still carries everything. Where will the pull go?”

She pressed her shoe against the upright’s base. Her leg shook.

“Through this joint into the sill. Then the beam under it.”

“Try.”

Mara wanted the whole room to stop moving. Nothing happened.

She narrowed her attention to the surfaces under her hand. Not the wall. Not the roof. The upright and the sill, trying to separate.

Stay together.

A sudden weakness hollowed her stomach, as if she had climbed too many stairs too quickly.

The pale line brightened.

The borer heaved on the sheet. Cloth tore at a corner, its weight dropped against the opening, and the upright jerked beneath Mara’s shoe.

The joint did not open.

The sill creaked. The beam below it took the force with a deep wooden complaint. Mara felt the burden pass where she had expected it to go.

[STATUS] Mara — Hold 1

She stared at her hand.

She was doing it.

Something impossible was obeying her, and the doorway was still wide enough to crawl through.

“Keep that,” Esken said. He rose, turning toward the workers farther along the deck. “Bring the long prop back. Stay off the underside.”

Behind Mara, Tavi shoved the trolley across the aisle. Its edge caught a rack and pushed it uphill, opening a passage along the wall. He wedged a wheel with a broken batten, then pulled a small laundry knife from his apron.

“Keep your head down.”

He cut the stretched sheet where it ran past the rack. The loose end snapped toward the borer. With nothing left to pull against, the animal slipped down the outside of the building, its claws rattling over boards.

Mara laughed once, a breathless sound she did not recognize.

Then the wall beside her buckled.

Her frame held. The planks next to it moved independently, bowing inward at shoulder height. Through a fresh gap she saw the borer clinging outside. One hooked leg punched through and caught the strap of her bag.

The strap tightened across her chest.

She grabbed the buckle. It jammed under the pull.

“Tavi.”

He turned immediately.

The wall lurched again. Mara got an arm out of the strap and let the bag fall. It wedged between a wash tub and the bulging planks.

Her phone was in it. Her keys. The notebook with her own handwriting, addresses she knew, names of people who would notice she had not come back.

She could reach it if the wall stopped.

There was another exposed connection beside the frame, a horizontal rail meeting a wall post. She stretched out her free hand.

“Leave that,” Esken said from outside.

“I can hold this one too.”

She had room. The ledger had said two.

She touched the rail and found the same sense of pressure, though less clearly. She tried to follow it into the post. There was too much moving, and her first bond kept tugging at her attention.

Stay together.

The second seam flashed pale.

For an instant the rail stayed attached.

Then a piece of the post tore away with it.

Dark, soft fibres spilled from beneath the hard outer wood. The pale seam remained on the little fragment until the fragment broke free of the wall.

The new connection failed. Everything it had briefly carried fell back against the remaining boards. The wall slammed inward, crushing the bag behind the tub.

Mara threw herself sideways.

Tavi caught her jacket before she slid into the wreckage.

“Door,” he said.

“I thought—”

“Now.”

She left the bag.

Tavi went first, low under the hanging lintel. He turned from the deck and took her forearm. Mara crawled over the threshold, keeping her other hand on the joint until the stretch became impossible.

When her fingers left it, the pale seam held.

She stumbled upright beside Tavi. Open air struck her face.

A street ran along the edge of an enormous wooden deck. Houses stood on it. Chimneys, balconies, a line of washing, a woman holding a child behind a barred gate. Beyond the rail lay a harbor enclosed by green slopes.

Beyond the harbor, islands moved.

The nearest had a fringe of translucent blue beneath its grassy top. Water streamed past a mineral edge like light through thick glass. Farther out, another island slid slowly behind it, carrying trees and a white slash of waterfall.

Mara gripped Tavi’s arm.

There should have been a road. There should have been cars, and brick flats, and the gray afternoon she had stepped into.

Pain drove through her fingers.

She looked down. Her hand was shaking, though she was no longer touching the door.

“Make it stop.”

Esken stood between her and the washhouse. Behind him, workers approached with a long timber, keeping to the deck.

“Your Hold?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Not yet.”

“We’re out.”

“The doorway’s still carrying its load. If you let go, that load goes straight back into the broken joint.”

Her knees felt loose. “I can’t hold up a building.”

“You aren’t. You’re keeping one connection closed. We’ll take it from you.”

He said it without reassurance he could not guarantee. Somehow that helped.

Tavi guided her onto a coil of rope near the railing, still only a short distance from the door. She tried pressing her hands between her knees. The shaking continued. Her knuckles ached as if she had been carrying heavy shopping bags by thin handles.

“Is it using me up?”

“Your strength,” Esken said. “Not what you learned.”

The workers set the prop beneath the sagging lintel. Esken directed them with short movements of his padded bar. One braced its foot against a deck beam while another drove wedges above it.

Mara watched every blow.

She could feel the first joint, an unwelcome point of attention she could not put aside. A glance at the ledger showed its place occupied and strain unresolved. Her second place was empty again. There was no verdict on the rest of the washhouse.

The hammer struck. The pull eased.

Another wedge went in, and the pain stopped deepening.

Esken crouched by the threshold, checked the timber, then looked back at her.

“Release it.”

“How?”

“Stop asking it to stay.”

She had been doing that all along, beneath thought: a small, desperate insistence.

She let it end.

The pale line faded. The doorway settled against the prop and stayed there.

Mara bent over her knees. Tavi sat beside her without asking whether she was all right.

After a while she closed her eyes.

Hold was still there.

Not active. Not taking anything from her. Hers.

She opened her eyes to the strange harbor and the people on the wooden street. A worker retrieved a dropped mallet. The woman behind the gate lowered her child to the deck. Somewhere farther into town, someone was calling for empty water buckets.

Life was continuing here.

“My bag,” Mara said.

Tavi looked toward the crushed wall. “Not while they’re still under there.”

She nodded, though he could not know what he was asking her to leave.

“Does this town have somewhere I can sit that isn’t falling down?”

“Our kitchen,” he said. “Usually.”

She almost smiled.

Esken straightened slowly, easing his damaged hand off the pry bar.

“When you can walk, come away from the edge.”

Mara looked once more at the doorway she had held together. Then she took Tavi’s offered arm and stood.