The yard crane is a timber gallows with a wheel, useful when it is not in a hurry.

Too few hands. Too much Translation. The keystone rises, turns, kisses the gate-post, and a chip flies like a spark that forgot to be fire. The rope burns your palm—a white line, then red. You let go because pain is information. Adults shout the stone back down onto rollers that should have been the whole story.

Rowan’s face is a closed tool.

“Bandage,” Maud says, already there, because Maud is always already there when stupidity needs linen. “You may still walk it slow, or you may sit in the lodge and be a warning with a pulse.”

The keystone is unhurt in the way that matters. You are hurt in the way that teaches.

The chip from the keystone is the size of a thumb-nail and the size of a lecture. Crane-wheel ticking backward is a sound you will hear when you try to sleep. Maud’s linen is clean. Your pride is not. Rowan does not waste words on never. He wastes work on slow.