Chapter 31: The Gallery

We climbed the tower in the dark, all one hundred and twelve steps.

Hyunjin went first, ducking under the beams.

Chan came last, and I could hear him not turning back.

I unlocked the gallery door with the big brass key, and the wind came in around us.

The whole harbour lay below, black and silver.

The lights of the ferry were crawling across the bay, still a mile out.

I took Hyunjin's comb from my pocket.

"Sit," I said. "I'm not letting you go down there looking like you fell out of a hedge."

He sat on the iron grating with his back against the railing, and I knelt behind him.

His hair slid through my fingers, long and heavy and cold.

I braided it plain and tight, as I had on the first Saturday.

I tied it off with a bit of waxed thread.

"Done," I said. "Now you look like a person."

"I was always a person."

"I know. The braid's for the harbour."

Chan stood a little way off, at the rail, with his hands in his jacket pockets and his hood down.

The wind was in his curls.

He looked at the dock, the fish plant, and the red roof of the Rusty Buoy.

"It's very small," he said.

"It's very small," I agreed. "That's the point. They'll all know by lunch, and I'll never be able to buy milk quietly again."

The first light came up from behind the headland, flat and gold.

On the water the ferry swung toward the slip, and I heard its horn through the glass.

People were already on the lower deck.

There were nurses in coloured scrubs, two men in hi-vis, a woman with a pram, a boy on a bicycle.

They looked up, the way people do at a lighthouse, because it is the thing there is to look at.

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