The
Handprints
Came First

The handprints always came first.

Mara found the newest one on the outside of her kitchen window, six floors above the nearest scaffold.

Five long fingers rested against the glass. Rainwater gathered in the palm and climbed toward the fingertips instead of running down. Beyond it, Jayjo's upper roofs had disappeared into morning fog. Antenna masts leaned out of the white and vanished again. Bridge cables hummed somewhere below, too deep to see.

Mara did not touch the window.

Roof Nine knew Mara by the sound of her boots: quick on the stairs, uneven on the landing. She was twenty-eight, narrow-shouldered and rope-muscled, with black hair braided close so the bridge wind had nothing to seize. Children came to her for barley sweets. Adults trusted her with whatever had to come back dry.

An old guide-cord burn had stiffened her left hand. She earned it at fifteen, racing home with medicine that arrived too late. Wetlung took her mother while Mara was still three roofs away, reeds beneath her shirt. Since then, Mara checked medicine by temperature, seal, and travel time. She never called it an ordinary parcel.

She set her tea on the floor, where the heat would not fog the glass, and backed into the hall. "Fresh one," she called.

The door opposite opened two inches. An eye appeared in the gap. Farther down, somebody leaned out far enough to show one horn wrapped in sleep-cloth. Across the corridor, old Sen held a piece of chalk between two black claws but did not step out.

"Inside or out?" he asked.

"Out. West window."

"Moving which way?"

"Hasn't moved yet."

Nobody corrected her. The people of Roof Nine knew what she meant. Sen put the chalk away.

At the end of the hall, someone pulled the fog line. A bell rang once above the stairwell, then the next roof answered, and the next. The last note came from Roof Twelve, where Holl's dented bell always sounded like a spoon striking a tooth.

Fresh trace.

Do not follow.

Mara went back inside and looked anywhere but the window.

Most mornings, she carried small necessities between the high roofs: dry batteries, sealed letters, starter cultures, medicine that could not be allowed to freeze or get wet. She had carried last words between feuding families and once a newborn inside her coat. People called her a courier when they had money and a favor when they did not. Mara answered to both.

On the table waited a waxed packet no larger than her palm. Inside it were two dry lung reeds and two slim vials of blue tincture. The medicine had come up from Eldenberry overnight wrapped in three layers of oilcloth and somebody's clean undershirt. It was meant for a little girl named Pella on Roof Fourteen, across the north bridges.

Pella had called her Aunt Mara since learning to speak, though no blood joined them. Mara had taught Pella's older brother, Tavi, to knot a rain cape, held Pella through her first fever, and eaten enough burnt dinners at their table to know which floorboard their mother, Miren, stepped over in the dark. Beside Pella's breathing cup stood a crooked wooden bird Holl had carved for her. Pella turned its leaning beak toward anyone who coughed. Miren kept a blanket folded behind the stove for the nights Mara finished her route too late to go home.

Pella had spent the night breathing through a tin cup while Miren kept the steam warm. The fog had arrived before the medicine did. Mara slid the packet beneath her coat. In the hall, Sen heard the buckle close.

"No," he said.

"I didn't ask."

"Good. Saves us both the trouble of pretending this is a discussion."

He was an old crow Beastkin with one clouded eye and shoulders narrowed by years of squeezing through crawl spaces built for smaller bodies. The feathers around his throat had gone silver. Wet air made them stand up in uneven ridges.

Sen had taken Mara in after her mother's room went quiet. He taught her which cable-song meant run, how to smell lightning through rain, and why a familiar voice in the fog sometimes deserved no answer. He had never called himself her father. She had never called him anything but Sen.

"North bridges will be barred," he said.

"Then I won't use the north bridges."

"The west wall already has a print."

"A window has a print."

"Windows become walls when people stop respecting them."

Mara checked the packet through her coat. Still there. Still dry.

"Pella has maybe an hour before the reeds in her cup soften," she said.

Sen looked at the floor for a moment, then opened his door and returned with a coil of red guide cord.

"This was already fraying," he said, pressing it into her hands. "If you happen to leave it somewhere useful, saves me throwing it away."

"Naturally."

"And Mara?" She waited. "Don't look for the body."

Outside, the roof edge disappeared into fog two steps ahead of Mara.

Mara tied one end of the guide cord to the ring beside the stair door, clipped the remaining coil to her belt, and let the red line pay out behind her as she crossed. The roof garden sat beneath patched glass, its leaves silvered by condensation. Someone had tied strips of foil above the beds to frighten ordinary birds. There was no wind to move them.

Old prints marked the walls around her.

Three fingers over a vent, circled in yellow chalk.

A palm stretched across the water tank, ringed in stove ash.

Four narrow marks beneath the bridge crank, dated by a child who had drawn a smiling face beside them after the adults left.

All three chalk rings had dates. Mara passed them without slowing.

The new mark had no chalk around it.

At the far end of the garden, water beaded on a railing in the shape of a hand. Mara stopped. The palm had not appeared all at once. A fingertip darkened the metal. Then another. Moisture lengthened between them. Knuckles arrived last, pressing dents into water without bending the rail beneath it.

The print pointed north, exactly where Mara needed to go. She passed the cord twice around the garden frame and turned east.

The gutter-walk there was hardly a path at all: a narrow lip, a leaning billboard brace, then nine iron steps descending to a roof that had once belonged to a laundry. In clear weather, Mara could cross it with two water buckets and no hand on the rail. In fog, she tested every surface with her weight before committing the next step.

She kept one hand on the red cord.

Warm steam rose from kitchens, bathrooms, engine cupboards, and crowded sleeping floors. It entered the fog carrying broth, soap, hot wire, wet fur, and the sharp medicinal stink of boiled mold. Mara could tell which buildings were occupied without seeing a window.

Halfway down the steps, she heard a shoe scrape behind her. Mara froze. Another scrape followed, small and careless.

"Tavi." Silence. "I can hear your buckle tapping."

Tavi came down out of the fog above, boots first, then coat, then the pale curve of one horn. His other horn had been cut short years ago and capped with a brass thimble. He was twelve and believed this qualified him to survive anything that had not killed him at eleven.

Mara had known that brass cap since the winter Tavi lost the horn to a broken heating fan. He hated being watched over, remembered every promise, and went silent whenever he was afraid. The tapping buckle belonged to a coat Mara gave him two winters ago. It was already short at the wrists.

"Mum said not to let you go alone," he whispered.

"Your mum is on Roof Fourteen."

"That's why she couldn't tell me herself."

"Go back."

"Pella's my sister."

Mara pulled the cord tight between them and checked the gate on his belt clip.

"Clip on," she said. "You step where I step. If you see a wet print, you do not point. You do not name it. You do not stare long enough to decide which way it faces."

Tavi clipped his belt to the cord.

"And if I see the Ape?"

"You didn't."

They descended. The laundry roof had sagged in the middle, forming a shallow pond under the fog. Lines of abandoned clothespins clicked overhead. A family lived beneath the old sorting shed; candlelight showed around its covered door, and somebody inside was singing multiplication tables to a wakeful child.

Mara touched the shed wall twice as she passed. Occupied. Safe enough. A hand tapped twice from inside.

At the next bridge, a chain had been drawn across the entrance. No lock. Just a soup spoon tied to the center with blue thread.

Holl tied spoons like that. He knew every bridge by its groan and kept the old crank teeth slick with cooking fat when proper grease could not be found. He never chained a span for a joke.

"Don't touch it," a voice called from the fog.

Holl appeared near the middle of the span, a broad man in a patched oilskin, beard beaded white with mist. One hand rested on the rail. The other held the wooden mallet he used to test rotten boards. A loose loop of bridge cable lay beside his boot. He was too far out. The fog had hidden the chain behind him.

"Holl," Tavi breathed.

Holl squinted toward them. "Your mother will peel you like a root when she sees where you've been."

Tavi almost smiled.

Behind Holl, water darkened the bridge crank.

One fingertip appeared on the iron. Then another.

Mara's stomach dropped.

"Holl," she said. "Don't turn around."

His smile died.

He turned.

His heel landed inside the loose cable loop.

The crank gave one tiny click. Holl had taught Mara that sound years ago: a holding tooth slipping out of place.

There was nothing behind him but the crank, the new handprint, and fog packed thick as wool.

Then the counterweight dropped somewhere inside the roof, and the bridge cable moved.

The loose loop snapped around Holl's ankle and took his feet from under him. His knee folded beneath him as the counterweight began hauling the bridge shut. His mallet went over the rail.

"Don't move!" Mara shouted.

Holl caught the railing, but the cable kept dragging him toward the crank housing.

Mara ripped the coil free of its belt hook and flung it. It struck his shoulder. Holl caught it with his free hand.

For half a second, she had him. Then the winch caught his sleeve.

The red cord burned through the old groove in Mara's left hand. She braced against the chain and counted the load: Holl, the winch, and Tavi clipped behind her.

When Tavi's boots began to slide, Mara let go.

The crank stopped with Holl pinned against the housing. The bridge bell began ringing after the mechanism had already gone still.

His scream came through the fog a breath later. Tavi covered his ears. Mara pulled him toward the hatch without looking back.

At the far end of the bridge, a dark vertical shape showed through the fog.

Mara saw a narrow head. One shoulder. An arm hanging down past where its knees should have been.

She blinked.

It was suddenly crouched beside Holl.

It did not touch Holl. It leaned close to his face as if listening.

Mara seized Tavi's coat and pulled him away from the chain.

"Below," she said.

He stared at the blood dripping between the bridge boards.

"Tavi. Below."

He kept staring until Mara shoved his shoulder toward the hatch. Then he moved.

They crawled through a rusted hatch and onto the back frame of an old advertisement for dry homes. Rain had peeled the printed woman's mouth from the sign years ago.

A warm drop struck the white woman's empty eye.

Another landed on Tavi's cheek.

He wiped it away, looked at the red on his fingers, and made no sound at all.

The metal frame ran beneath them like a ladder laid across open air.

Mara did not look down. She watched Tavi's hands instead. Grip. Slide. Grip. His knuckles had gone pale around the steel.

Above them, something landed on the bridge.

The bridge did not shake until three breaths later.

Tavi's eyes lifted.

Mara kicked the frame.

The clang snapped his attention toward her.

"What was—"

"Nothing you saw. Keep moving."

A railing groaned overhead. Long fingers curled around its underside, with no hand or arm yet visible.

They were colorless where the fog crossed them and dark where no light should have reached. Water fell upward from each nail. An arm followed, too thin and too long, extending across the bridge without revealing a shoulder.

Mara looked at the rust beneath her hands.

Grip. Slide. Grip.

The fingers let go.

Far ahead, something struck metal.

Then the handprint appeared beside Tavi's face.

Five wet marks opened across the dead advertisement. One fingertip touched the brass cap on his horn.

Tavi screamed and pulled away.

His boot slipped between the bars.

Mara caught the back of his coat. The packet beneath hers struck the frame. Glass clicked inside the waxed wrapping.

Mara locked one arm around a rusted brace and held Tavi by the coat. The medicine vials clicked again beneath her ribs.

The red guide cord pulled sideways.

Mara stared at it.

The cord ran back through the fog, but it no longer led behind them. It crossed the sign frame and vanished toward a roof they had never walked on.

The buildings had not moved. The route had.

"Mara," Tavi gasped.

She hauled him up until his chest scraped metal. His fingers found the frame. His clipped harness trembled against the cord.

"Unclip," she said.

"But the line—"

"Is lying. Unclip."

He obeyed. Mara let the red cord go.

It slipped across the steel and drew itself into the fog. She heard it pass through three distant rings before the sound stopped.

Then it was gone. Tavi pressed his face against the metal.

"How do we get back?"

"We don't. We get across."

"How?"

Mara closed her eyes and listened for the parts of the route that fog could not hide.

She listened.

Behind them: multiplication tables, the child now shouting every sixth number.

Below: a vent fan with a cracked bearing, turning in a three-beat limp.

To the north: bridge cables singing under water weight.

And farther on, almost buried beneath the fog, a woman striking a pot with a wooden spoon.

Three quick. Two slow. Three quick.

"Mum," Tavi said.

Mara opened her eyes without looking beyond him.

"She's calling the whole roof home," he said. "Not us. Not by name."

"Can you hold the rhythm?" Mara asked.

Tavi nodded.

"Then lead. Nothing else."

They crawled. Wet prints appeared along the frame ahead of them. Some were human-sized. Some were broad enough to cross two beams. One formed around Mara's hand while she was still holding the steel.

Cold water filled the spaces between her fingers. She did not pull away or look for the arm that had not arrived.

Three quick. Two slow. Three quick.

Tavi breathed the rhythm through his teeth.

Behind Mara, metal buckled with a soft pop.

The fog briefly showed a narrow head above the sign frame. It had two dark hollows and no features Mara could hold in focus. Strips of shadow suggested ribs. One shoulder was missing.

Mara's chin lifted toward it on its own.

Tavi struck the brass cap of his horn against the frame.

The clang snapped her attention toward him.

"What's six times seven?" he shouted.

Mara stared at him.

"The kid back there skipped it," Tavi said. "What's six times seven?"

"Forty-two."

"Louder."

"Forty-two!"

"Six times eight?"

"Forty-eight!"

Tavi kept asking. Mara answered and moved one hand at a time toward the pot signal.

Water began dripping from the frame behind them. A handprint opened on the next beam. Mara kept her eyes on Tavi while the pot signal grew louder.

At the far side of the sign frame, a roof edge emerged. Hands reached from the fog—ordinary hands, short-fingered and shaking. Miren caught Tavi first. Two neighbors took Mara beneath the arms and pulled her onto the roof.

Nobody asked what they had seen. They shut the hatch and laid an iron bar across it. Somebody pushed a folded towel into Mara's hands.

"The medicine," she said.

The waxed packet had split at one corner. Inside, one vial remained whole.

One vial held the full dose.

Pella lay beside a kettle in the warmest room, her little horns wrapped in red cloth to stop them striking the wall when the coughing took her. Miren crushed the dry reeds into the breathing cup and added three drops of blue.

The steam changed smell.

Pella breathed in. Nobody spoke until she breathed out.

Her next breath went all the way in. Mara counted another, then another. For thirteen years she had remembered the three roofs between herself and her mother's last breath. Now she was close enough to hear each one.

Pella's fingers moved first. They found Holl's crooked bird beside the cup and pushed it weakly toward Mara. Mara closed the child's hand around it again.

Miren lowered her forehead to the child's and stayed there. Mara kept counting breaths.

Mara sat on the floor beside Tavi. Fog pressed against every window. Now and then, a roof bell rang somewhere in the white and another answered.

The prints on Roof Fourteen stopped appearing that afternoon. By evening, the bridge cables held one direction again. Mara and Sen walked the roofs together at dawn.

They found the red cord still looped around the garden frame. The end tied to the stair-door ring remained where Mara had left it. Eleven meters beyond the frame had vanished. The remaining end was wet.

It took five people to cut Holl from the crank.

Sen wrapped Holl in a gray blanket. Miren scrubbed the boards with hot water she could not afford to waste, then carried the bucket to the roof garden.

Tavi did not come to the bridge. He sat beside Pella with Holl's crooked bird lying between them and counted by sixes until his voice stopped shaking.

Holl's left hand remained closed around the railing until Mara broke two fingers to free it. A long wet print lay beneath his palm, untouched by his blood.

They left the wet bridge print untouched.

On the dead advertisement below the closed bridge, the long print beside Tavi's horn had dried to a pale mineral stain.

Sen climbed down with a piece of yellow chalk between his claws.

He did not ask where the beast had gone.

He did not draw an arrow or write a warning. He placed the chalk in Mara's hand and waited while she made one careful ring around the dried stain.

The bridge above remained chained. Only when the circle closed did people begin using the lower route again.