The bells were still cold when I woke.
I lay on the narrow couch under the stairs and listened to the library breathe. Not the usual quiet. The deep kind. The kind that waits for a choice. The kettle clicked as metal remembered heat, then forgot it. I sat up, washed the cup, and slid the chair back from the back door with slow hands.
The line of green at the paper seam pulsed once, as if it had been watching the dark and was relieved to see me. The glass book felt cool in my left hand. When I opened it, the page threw a faint light that touched my wrist like a thin ribbon.
Wake early, the page said.
Do not run.
Do not lie.
Carry water.
Carry a name you will not use.
The last line pricked like a thorn you only notice when you move. I filled a bottle at the little sink, slid it into my bag, then stood with my palm on the paper circle until the pulse found my heart and taught it a steadier beat. The door softened and gave.
Morning in the city tasted like clean stone and the first bite of an apple. The rail lights were dim. The spans hummed one note lower, settled, patient. I crossed the square where the pool lay flat and pale, a bright coin in a wide palm, and climbed the inner stair.
Lio was already on the deck, hair tied back with a clear ribbon that caught the thin light and let it go. She had chalk lines on her trousers and a small roll of cord at her belt. She looked across the crowns the way a person listens for a piece of music they know by heart.
"You are early," she said, and that meant she had been earlier.
"The book asked me to wake before the bells warmed," I said.
"Good," she said. "Today they will warm fast. The festival always presses. We have nets set. We have ladders waiting. We have guides at each crown. We will ask for patience and the city will say yes, then forget, the way it does."
Iven joined us with his measuring tape looped twice around his wrist. He had a pencil behind one ear and dust in the crease of his left sleeve.
"We tuned the rail with your tone," he said. "It holds. Not much, just enough to keep the edge honest. If you have more of that breath in you, give the east span one touch at the second bell."
"I can try," I said. "How is the ledger."
"Heavy," he said, but he smiled with one side of his mouth. "Heavy is good. It means we can pay when the day asks."
A small team from the pool brought a narrow trolley and set a shallow basin near each tower door. The tool woman set her roll beside the closest basin and looked up at us.
"Leave us names as you keep them," she said. "We will mark and carry. The ledger will hold."
"Paid for before the need, imagine that," Lio said softly, and the tool woman gave her a tired smile that was almost a laugh.
By the time the first bell warmed, the decks were full. Families with string bags. Old couples with slow hands. A troupe of young people in white shirts who carried clear kites shaped like shells. A guide in a blue scarf gathered her group and spoke calmly, pointing out where to watch, where to rest, where not to stop.
I walked the inner rail with the book against my ribs. At the east span, I placed my left palm on the light and let the pool tone move from breath into glass. The rail brightened by a shade. The hum answered with a long note that sat true. The book warmed once, a soft yes.
Back near the west crown, Lio stood with two workers and a rope coiled at her feet. Iven checked fastenings with a hand that had done this too often to pretend anything was new, yet still touched every cord as if it were the first time.
A child ran past with a ribbon on a stick. A vendor clinked clear bowls into a stack and filled them with fruit on ice. A small group set a frame for a singer who tuned a small stringed instrument with quick fingers. The day opened like a slow fan.
The second bell spread thin across the roofs. The crowd thickened as if the sound had pulled people up the stairs. Lio met the first press with a lifted hand and a voice that carried and did not scare.
"Walk steady," she said. "Do not stop at the crown. Help us keep the song even and the span will hold."
For a while, they listened. They always do at first. The groups flowed. The rail wore its small new shine. The hum sat low and patient.
A boy with a wooden whistle cut through the crowd, piping something quick and bright. People turned their heads with the reflex that listens before it knows why. The movement swayed the pace. The bridge answered with a small complaint, a tired breath caught and released.
"Let me feel it," Lio said. She stepped onto the glass and laid her palm near a seam they had marked with a thin cord. Her shoulders settled. She nodded once, the way you nod to a horse that will be good if you are steady, then motioned the guides to keep the flow.
The singer began to play near the far deck. The music was gentle at first, a thin line in the air that made people smile. Then another musician joined, then two more. The line became a small net, threads of sound that crossed and held. People slowed. They tilted their heads. They reached for their pockets and phones. They stopped at the crown to capture the light.
The hum rose by the width of a breath.
"Move them," Iven said. "Kindly. Now."
Guides walked at a slow jog, palms up, voices soft and sure. "Keep walking, thank you, keep walking." The crowd remembered itself and began to move again, but the chord had shifted. The net under the glass did nothing yet, but the workers near the cranks set their feet as if they expected to be called.
I opened the book with my thumb. New words settled.
Count ten.
If the pace slows, call a name.
Do not shout.
Do not run.
I counted, eyes on the crown. One. Two. Three. A child climbed a rail post with the casual grace of someone who had not learned to be afraid. His father lifted him down with a small laugh and a quick scold, and the boy scowled in a way that said he would wait and try again later.
Eight. Nine. Ten.
"Ten," I said, not loud. Not the boy from before. I said the number like a name that belonged to the whole span. People looked up as if called by a friend. They remembered the earlier story without knowing why. The guides caught the change and repeated it with their hands. "Ten, keep it moving, thank you, ten."
The crowd flowed. The hum sank a small degree.
A woman in a green coat appeared at the near deck with a man on her arm. Yesterday she had been the one on her knees beside him. Today he tried to walk alone. He took one step and was proud. He took a second and the pride slid into fear.
"Not today," Lio said gently, and guided them to a rest bench. "You will walk when the city is less hungry. You will laugh at me when you do and tell me to mind my own business. I look forward to both."
They listened. They sat. The bench looked like a hand that had been waiting for that exact weight.
The string players changed key. The light along the rail lifted and fell with the chord, like a candle the music could bend. The span hummed with them, and for a while the song was right.
At noon the crowd became a tide. You could feel it before you could see it, that thickening in the air that says hundreds of feet are choosing the same moment. Someone set a small puppet theatre at the far deck and two performers in mirrored masks began a silent show. The masks caught the sun and threw it in bright coins. Everyone leaned to see. Everyone forgot to walk.
"Move them," Iven said again, and there was a new weight at the center of the words.
I stepped onto the glass and walked toward the crown. My left hand kept the book hard against my ribs. My right stayed inside my sleeve. The span felt like a plank across slow water. It did not frighten me. It asked for care.
The seam that had failed yesterday was now braced and quiet. Another seam a little down from it had grown restless. Lio placed her palm there and closed her eyes. "Talk to me," she said, and the glass did. I saw the reply in the small shift of her mouth.
"Not here," she said. "There."
She pointed with her chin to a point where the crowd had bunched because a man had stopped to paint. He had a small canvas on his knees and a tray across the rail, and he had lost the world in the color of light on dust. People paused to watch him work. The hum rose. The rail dimmed by the width of a breath.
"Sir," a guide said gently, "please keep moving."
He did not hear. He dipped a brush, lifted it, did not touch the canvas, looked and looked, waiting for the exact moment the light would become paint.
The book warmed hard enough that I felt it through the shirt.
If you must choose, save one who looks away.
I walked to him and crouched. Up close I saw his hands were steady and his eyes were tired in that way you get when the only thing that rests you is work. He was not rude. He was far away.
"What color is it," I asked.
He blinked. "It is not a color," he said. "It is a silence that looks like light."
"Good," I said. "Will you trade me that line for a walk to the bench. There will be light there too. It will not be this light, but it will be a light that forgives you for missing this one."
He looked at me as if I had spoken a language he did not know he knew. His eyes moved to the crowd, then to his brush, then to my hand on the rail.
"I will carry your things," I said. "You will keep your eyes on the memory of this light and you will put it down later. I promise it will still be there. It will be another light, and it will be the same."
He breathed. "All right," he said, and let me lift the tray. We walked. One step. Then another. The guides eased the crowd past like water slipping around stones. The hum sank back to the lower note that felt like a hand on your back saying, this way.
At the bench he sat and touched the canvas with one gentle stroke. The paint was not the color caught at the crown a moment ago. It did not matter. He smiled a small, true smile that people make when they accept the world as it is without surrendering what they love.
Lio raised her palm. The workers near the far net loosened and tightened their lines in a steady rhythm, a boatman's motion on a river. For a span of time I could not count, the city remembered how to move without pushing. Children laughed. Old people paused in safe places, then set off again with calm steps. The singer changed to a tune that asked people to walk while they listened.
The book cooled. New lines came, neat as a ledger.
You paid with a line of truth.
Good.
Wash your hands when the hour turns.
Carry water to the bench at the pool.
I took out the bottle and set it on the bench beside the painter, who thanked me with a nod and did not look away from the canvas again.
The hour turned with a soft change in the light. I washed my hands at the basin. The water bit and eased. The pale line across my right palm showed and then faded to almost nothing.
When I looked back at the span, the tide had crested. The crowd thinned as if the day had drawn a long breath and let it out. Lio stepped off the glass and rolled her shoulder. Iven checked the anchors one more time and released a small sigh that told me very little and said enough.
We walked to the pool. The tool woman stood with her roll open and her pencil ready.
"Give me everything you caught without knowing," she said, smiling in a way that meant she knew exactly how much that was to ask.
"One name," I said. "Five lines of truth. Three promises made and kept. One breath given to a rail that learned it."
She wrote each down with the tidy care of someone who understands that records are a kind of love.
"Paid," she said, and touched the water with a wand. The pool answered with a low tone and a quick one that sat together without pushing.
The afternoon stretched. We set benches where the light went hard. We moved the puppet theatre to a small court where no seam would mind. We taught a guide the paid tone so she could touch the rail when I was on the far deck. We carried old men and we carried the pride of old men when the old men would not be carried. We made a little room wherever a line bunched, the way you slide a book down a shelf to keep the spines from grinding.
When the last bell warmed one final time, the city remembered to go home. Vendors packed their trays. The string player tucked his instrument under his arm and counted his coins and seemed surprised he had as many as he did. The clear kites folded and disappeared into thin bags that looked too small to hold them. The rail lights came up another shade and kept that small glow like a memory that knows how to be useful.
Lio stood with her hands on her hips and looked at the crowns one by one. "Tomorrow will not be this heavy," she said.
"Until it is," Iven said, and she nodded without arguing.
The book warmed, not bright, not heavy. A small line slid into place.
Mark two windows.
One that looks in.
One that looks out but does not show the city.
"Again," Lio said, as if she had heard it with me. "We will walk the gallery before the stars matter."
"Now," I asked.
"Now," she said. "Before we are too tired to trust ourselves."
We climbed the inner stair. The corridor of windows waited in its quiet. The pane with the library aisle held its dust at the same angle as before, the paper circle on the door still bright, the air in the image moving and not moving at once. I set my left palm on the glass and let the paid tone touch it. The view drank the sound and darkened for a blink, then brightened again. The book wrote one small word.
Marked.
At the far end a window showed a field of tall grass. The wind moved through it with that slow hand that teaches you to breathe. In the distance a line of trees stood like a promise that did not need to explain itself.
"This is not our city," I said.
"It is not," Lio said. "It still matters. The shelves behind your door know this place. I can feel it in my teeth."
I touched the pane with the same steady breath. The glass shivered as if a bird had passed close. The book accepted. Another small word.
Marked.
"Good," Lio said. "If you have to run, you can run there without running. You can arrive without losing what you have not paid for."
The day had turned. The rail lights made a soft line along the walkways and the crowns rested like quiet lungs. We stood for a moment and let the city be a kind place. Even the wrong notes in the far spans seemed like small scratches on a table you love too much to sand.
On the way down, near the bend in the stair, the bell rang.
It was soft. It was clean. It did not belong to the tower. It lived in the seam of the door that goes down from my desk, the same fine sound I had learned to hear and let pass.
I listened once.
"Row," my own voice said, patient and sure. "You could stay. You could be the person who carries water and teaches rails to sing in the right key. You could let the shelves keep their hunger without paying more of your own name."
I closed my ears. I let the sound move past like water around a stone. It did not push me. It did not catch me. It went on without me and was gone.
Lio watched my face. "Yes," she said simply.
"Yes," I said.
We stepped out to the deck. The last people crossed with slow steps that did not trick the span into thinking it had to catch them. The pool woman closed her book and tucked the pencil behind her ear. Iven spoke three short sentences to the night crew and handed them the shift like a careful tool.
The book cooled. One final line appeared for the day.
Sleep in the library.
Wake before the bells warm.
Do not say the saved names.
When the light at the rail dims, breathe, then listen.
"I will see you at first light," Lio said.
"I will bring a story for your tea," I said.
"Bring two," she said, and walked away along the curve, a small figure with steady feet and a ribbon that found the last scraps of day and returned them, spark by spark.
I found the door with no handle by its quiet. I set my left hand on the wood. The pulse matched my heart, then led it by one breath, then matched it again. The door softened and made space.
The stair below was green at the edge. The smell of apples waited. I climbed, slid the chair back to where it had lived before all this began, and sat at the small desk where the scratches look like a river frozen mid current.
The library settled around me. The rule sat in my mind like a steady stone. When a book leaves this place, the world it describes leaves the world you live in. It did not feel like a threat tonight. It felt like a door that can be closed, if you remember to listen.
I set the book on the desk. The page turned by itself, then rested, blank and cool, as if it had said enough for one day.
I washed my hands. I watched the water take the dust and make it harmless. I lay down on the couch with my head where I could see the back door if it decided to glow.
Sleep came fast. The city's lower note moved through me like a kind river. For a while I did not dream. When I did, the dream was only this. A rail that learned a name. A bridge that remembered how to breathe. A door that will open when I ask it to, as long as I tell the truth.