Chapter 1 - City of Borrowed Faces
We finish the tea on the church steps. The rain has thinned to a mist.
“I’m Rae,” she says, holding the empty cup.
I nod. A name sits on my tongue and refuses to move. “I don’t have one today.”
“That’s okay.” Rae tucks the cup into a bag. “Walk with me? Market’s opening.”
We cross the square. Vendors lift tarps and shake off water. Carts roll. Someone sweeps puddles toward a drain. A posted sign near the stalls reads, in block letters: Ask before playing audio. Count to four. Keep exits clear. People obey without fuss. When a busker tests a loop pedal, they raise a hand first. The nearest row nods. Only then does the beat click in, soft and even.
Rae moves easy through the lanes. “You need anything? Bread? Soap?”
“Bread,” I say. My stomach answers with a quiet ache.
We stop at a table with round loaves. The vendor smiles. “Warm batch. Want to smell?”
Rae looks at me. I nod. The vendor tips the cloth back. Heat and yeast and salt. I breathe once, twice, three, four. Rae pays with coins and a folded note. I reach for my pockets, find little there but the map and the bell-key. The key presses my thigh through cloth like a reminder to stay honest.
We pass a stall of tall candles printed with saints. The faces are close to right and not right. One shows a man with storm-gray eyes and a ring of clouds around his throat. The label reads SAINT THUNDERER (LIMITED REPRINT). The mouth is almost mine, and not.
Rae watches me watch it. “You look like you want to break the shelf,” she says, gentle.
“I don’t,” I say. It isn’t true for the first second. It becomes true after the fourth. “I’m done fixing what I got wrong.”
The candle-seller notices our pause. “You know him?” she asks. “People say he used to change the weather with a word.”
“Stories do that,” I say. “Not people.”
She shrugs. “Stories pay rent.” She means no harm. She turns to a new customer.
We keep moving.
At a corner booth, a man sits behind a hanging of tin tags. Each tag has a hole punched at the top and a name stamped in a neat hand. A sign over his head reads REGISTRY: LOST NAMES FOUND. Below it, smaller text: No refunds. No guarantees.
He lifts a tag and rings it on a nail. The sound is clean and small. sol-la-do-fa. The pattern hits me in the ribs before it reaches my ear.
“Looking for you?” he asks.
“I’m not for sale,” I say. My voice stays even. Rae stands half a step closer, not pushing, just present.
“Everybody’s buying something,” the man says. “Could be a shortcut. Could be a past.”
“Not today.”
He smiles like it’s all the same to him. “Good answer.” He sets the tag down. The tin settles against the board with a soft click. fa. The four-note shape hangs in my head after we leave.
We pass a table with jars of “miracle coins.” The label promises “better odds on hard days.” A teenager runs the stall. She explains the rules with a fast smile. You carry a coin. When the day tenses up, you press its edge and count to four. That’s the miracle. She doesn’t call it a trick. She calls it a habit.
“It works,” she says. “Most of the time, what I need is already trying to happen. The coin makes me notice.”
Rae buys one. Presses it into my palm. “For when your hands twitch.”
I roll the coin under my thumb. It has a shallow groove around the edge. It doesn’t promise thunder. It promises a pause. “Thank you,” I say.
We stop by a booth of printed posters, old concert bills from the city’s loud years. The ink is loud even now. People used to rent a feeling and call it truth. I touch the corner of a poster that says BREATHE LOUDER. Someone has crossed it out with marker and written BREATHE TOGETHER. I like the edit. I don’t need the paper.
A woman across the lane hand-letters names on small wooden slips. Her sign reads FORGERS and then, in smaller letters, we fix what paper got wrong. A queue of three waits, each with ID cards and school forms. She works slow. She checks each request twice and asks for consent more than once. When a man tries to hurry her, she points to the posted rules and taps the line: Every sound must earn its silence. He nods and sits back. No one claps. The correction stands on its own.
Rae hands me half the bread. We eat as we walk. The crust flakes. The middle is warm. It’s the first thing today that feels simple.
“You from here?” Rae asks.
“I don’t think so,” I say. “I woke up with a key and a map.”
“You looked at that church like you knew it.”
“My hands did. My head didn’t.”
She nods. “That happens.” She pulls a pencil from behind her ear and draws a small square on my map. “This is the Whisper Mill. People go there when their rooms are too loud. No instruments. Just breath practice and a kettle. You don’t have to talk.”
“I can try that.”
We turn down a narrow street. A speaker above a café door spits out two seconds of static. The barista inside hits a switch. Silence returns. A posted meter by the entrance shows a number: 38 dB. Below it: Thank you for keeping the room steady.
I feel the old reflex in my chest, the urge to clear the sky, push the fog back, flex. It’s fast and bright and heavy, like a muscle remembering it once mattered. I do nothing. I stand under the eave and count with the coin, one, two, three, four. The urge passes like a hand unclenching.
Rae watches my face. “You okay?”
“I wanted to move the weather,” I say. “I didn’t.”
“That’s a good rep,” Rae says. “Keep stacking them.”
We buy soap and two apples. An old man plays a bowed instrument made from a tin can and a stick. He looks up before he starts a new phrase. The small circle around him nods. The bow lands. The sound is thin and true. People drop coins because they want to, not because anyone cornered them.
A pair of volunteers in blue vests rolls a mobile sign into place near the busy crosswalk: SLOW YOUR SOUND. A cyclist brakes without complaint. A delivery driver cuts the engine and coasts the last few meters. The street feels less like a fight. My shoulders drop a notch I didn’t know was tense.
We loop back toward the square. The church tower is quiet. The rope inside will wait for me. I like that it doesn’t call me like a boss, it sits like a door I can choose.
At the edge of the market, a boy with a stack of flyers raises a hand and asks, “Can I offer you a listening room schedule?” He waits. We nod. He gives us a paper with times and a simple rule set: No solos longer than two minutes. Get consent before harmonizing. If you cry, that’s allowed.
Rae folds the paper into her pocket. “Want to go tonight?”
“Yes,” I say, before my fear can say something else.
We stop at a bench. Rae tears the last piece of bread in half and hands it to me. “You really don’t know your name?”
“I might,” I say. “It doesn’t owe me obedience.”
“That’s a sane answer.” She takes a bite. “Names are better when they choose you back.”
The bell-key is heavy in my pocket. I lay it in my palm and look at it plain: bronze, worn, simple. No glow. No trick. It’s only a key. But when a cart rolls over a patch of broken pavement, the wheel taps four quick notes on the stones as it bounces. sol, la, do, fa. The sound is small. It lands like a yes.
Rae hears it too. “Pretty pattern,” she says. “I’ve been humming it since I was a kid. No idea why.”
I put the key away. “Maybe it’s just how the street talks when it’s not trying to sell something.”
“Maybe.” Rae stands. “You look tired. Walk you home?”
“Yes.”
We return by the same route. The ground-floor door sticks a little. I wait a beat and then push. It opens without a fight. On the landing, I pause.
“Do you want to come up?” I ask. “There’s hot water. I could make tea.”
“Another time,” Rae says. “Let me know if you go to the Mill. I’ll save a seat.”
“Thank you,” I say.
She steps back. “Rest. Count first. Speak second.”
I nod. She goes.
In my room, I leave the door open a finger-width again. I set the bread on the table and the soap by the sink. The coin sits next to the bell-key. I wash the market dust off my hands and face. When I close my eyes, the day sorts itself into small pieces: the clean ring of tin on nail, the groove of the coin, the crossed-out poster, Rae’s calm voice.
On the counter, my note waits: Count to four before speaking. Don’t buy awe. Hold the room steady. Try again.
I add one more line: Don’t buy yourself back. Then I underline try again.
Outside, somewhere I can’t see, a bell should be ringing. It isn’t. Tomorrow I’ll ask it once more. If it answers, good. If it doesn’t, I’ll keep the vow I can keep: one, two, three, four. Then speak.