You drive the wedge home with a mallet that knows it is not a chisel. Ned lashes the meeting of putlog and ledger until the knot looks like a small building.

“Names,” he says, because he believes names keep people alive. “Standard: the upright. Ledger: the horizontal that holds the floor. Putlog: the one that goes into the wall. Wedge: the stubborn pebble of wood. Lashing: the reason you are not a story they tell at supper.”

The board stops gossiping. Your knees stop inventing extra joints.

From the platform the south flyers are a lesson you can walk. Each flying buttress is an arch that does not shelter anyone; it takes the vault’s sideways push and hands it to a heavy pier, and the pier hands it to the ground, which is used to that sort of thing.

Down northeast, the mason’s yard ticks: mallets, bankers (the benches, not the money), a shed for templates. Rowan is still a road away. The keystone is still a quarry’s opinion.

Maud’s porridge is a rumor in your stomach. The wind has not finished its day.

You wipe lime off the mallet and look east through the empty crossing. The keystone’s absence is a shape. Centering ribs wait like the inside of a boat. A jackdaw sits on a flyer and is not a symbol. It is a jackdaw. Ned raps the lashing. “Again tomorrow if the wind says so. Rope is cheaper than a boy.”