Page 60 of Pocket Wife

Rethan’s eyes sharpen. “Beneath the grain.”

“The old threshing yard,” Samuel says from outside. He has arrived with his hat in his hands, face grim. “Before the council hall, before the schoolhouse.”

I turn to him. “You know that from Grandfather?”

“Partly.” Samuel steps inside, careful to avoid the glass. “He said the first gatherings were held under the threshing platform during flood season.”

I remember suddenly: being nine years old, chasing dust-mice near the abandoned yard, my father warning me away from the old grain floor.

“You told me there was hollow ground beneath it,” I say.

Samuel nods. “Storage cellar, maybe. We sealed it when the new granary went up. Too unstable.”

Rethan lifts a hand. “We do not enter without witnesses, structural support, and a live record.”

I give him a look. “You say romance differently than other men.”

His expression remains solemn, but the bond warms. “I will attempt poetry after survival.”

Celia makes a sound that is not quite a laugh, not quite a sob.

We move before full dark.

The square becomes a line of lanterns, beams, rope, medical kits, and recorders. Nara Venn carries a light with her sleeping son wrapped against her chest. Celia comes too, refusing three separate offers to sit down. On the relay screens, Stonebend and Tamsin Ford stay connected, their engineers talking Torren through old flood bracing methods.

The bakery has been attacked.

The valley answers by becoming larger.

The old threshing yard waits beyond the school road, half-hidden behind dry grass and rusted grain frames. The main platform has sagged in the center. Rainwater pools in dark patches between warped boards. The place looks abandoned enough that even memory might have walked past it.

I raise my lantern.

Fresh boot marks cut across the mud.

Not valley boots.

Heavy. Armored. Recent.

Every conversation stops.

Rethan crouches near the first print, careful not to touch it. “Helix.”

Torren swears softly. “They understood the song.”

“No,” Rethan says. “They understood enough of the scan.”

I face the platform’s center.

The old boards have been pried up.

Beneath them, a square hatch lies exposed, its iron ring newly scraped bright. Three dents mark the frame, close together. Two more cut the stone beneath.

Three knocks for bread.

Two knocks for bone.

Celia covers her mouth with her good hand.