“They don’t last,” Remsl said, standing. “Nothing does. That’s why you have to make so many.”
“You’re the scribbler,” he said. His voice was the sound of dry bark flaking off a log.
He placed the invisible carving on the fountain’s edge, and for a moment—just a moment—the fountain was no longer dry. Water ran over the mossy stone, clear and cold, and I heard a child’s laugh from a year that no longer existed. “They don’t last,” Remsl said, standing
“Homes,” he said. “I carve the homes people have forgotten they lived in. Not the walls. The space inside the walls. The warm pocket of air where a child hid during hide-and-seek. The bit of hallway where two people fell in love on a rainy Tuesday. The silence in the pantry after a good meal.”
But sometimes, when the light is just right, I hold one up, and I see a door I’d forgotten. Or a window. Or the faint, impossible shape of a man who was never born, who had no title, who spent eternity carving the only thing that mattered: His voice was the sound of dry bark flaking off a log
“I’m the archivist,” I said, clutching my notebook like a shield.
“Don’t cry,” Remsl said, not unkindly. “That’s just the shape of it settling into you. It’s meant to fit.” “Homes,” he said
“What are you carving?” I whispered.