Noon’s shafts of light spill through the window. Osip’s thoughts have turned to the ephemera that gather in black columns on the shore come spring. Steam rises from his cup of tea the way the insects do from the ground. Ships cleave the waves and infiltrate the bay. He’s not watching the procession of red and white ships keeping time, daubs against the blue of sea and sky. He stays seated at the table his father made, takes tiny sips of tea. The leaves adhere to the rim of the cup; when they stick to his lips, he spits them out.
How long will Sevastian be gone? He said he was heading for the mountains by Circé. A four-day walk to fetch the sweet beans the boys so love. The Old Woman uses them to buy herself peace and quiet in the winter when nothing else works.
His first infusion of the fall. He drinks, turning the cup slowly in the palm of his hand. As it empties, the leaves adhere to the porcelain and soon nothing is left but their black pattern. Osip sighs. Sevastian told him some women can read the future simply by looking at the image created there.
Mie is waiting for him. At first, he thought she wouldn’t come, but before the tide nibbled away at the path, he saw her leave the forest and cross the spit of land below. For the past two hours, she has been downstairs in the deserted bedroom. He has waited a good while to see if she would leave. She has stayed.
Dé is with the Old Woman picking mushrooms in the clearing. Abel is doing the rounds of the snares he has set in the forest. Seth is playing with a boat he must have built during the summer. The path will soon be entirely swallowed up by the sea: no one will be able to come or go from the lighthouse till mid-afternoon.
The drying leaves have settled in the shape of a cauldron, maybe an octopus, Osip can’t decide which. He dips his finger into the cup, touches the leaves, swirls them about, but not too much. He’d like to tweak the pattern slightly, change his life by moving a few specks around the bottom of a cup.
A ship blows its horn. Not a warning — a greeting. Osip doesn’t climb up to the gallery to reply. If he did, he’d be tempted to pick up the spyglass and train it on Noé’s cabin. And if he sees Noé, he won’t go down to Mie.
More than anything, he wishes the bottom of his cup would tell a story other than his own.
He gets up, and in doing so scrapes the chair along the floor so that the little one in the room below will be sure to hear him, then walks out of the office. On the threshold, he hesitates — the bedroom, or the lookout? He places one foot on the first step and pauses, his life may be at stake, then at last, he turns his back to the lantern, his heavy shoes sounding on the stone. He grips the railing as he descends.