Unlike any others in this room, this cubby has a pattern inscribed in the wood around it. He stares. The sun illuminates the cubby like an electric torch. Like a beacon. So that Isaac can’t miss it. It’s right there, the eternity knot carved into the wood, tracing the entire outline of the cubby, a sign.

He runs across the room—the sun is dipping quickly below the window—and stares at the cubby with its pile of bound books and scrolls. One of them must be for him, he’s sure of it. He’ll have to look through them all, though his time is running short. He jerks them out of the cubby and lays them on the table. One by one he opens or unrolls them. Sweat beads on his forehead, as he stares at the jumble of what he now knows must be Greek. No, no, no, he thinks, as he sets them aside one by one, hearing from across the room the tick-tick-tick of the watch.

He reaches the second-to-last scroll, despair filling him. As he unrolls this one, though, right away he sees that it’s different. For one thing, the paper is not the same, but it’s also not in Greek.

It’s not even in Czech.

The words on this paper are English.

The scroll is some kind of architectural drawing or map or both. Symbols and lines form a pattern, and words are scattered throughout, but they make no sense on a quick scan. It has to be a kind of puzzle that will take time for him to decipher. But when Isaac sees again the eternity knot, drawn in the upper corner, he’s sure this scroll is meant for him.

He rolls it up and slides it inside his shirt and buttons his shirt over it.

At that moment a creaking noise fills the room, and he turns. The carved wood door re-forms in the stone wall, and the woman and girl walk through the door, which disappears behind them.

As does the sun, disappearing below the horizon, leaving a purple sky rimmed in orange, soft light in this room behind the woman and girl.

Isaac stares at them, and they stare back, mouths open in surprise.

They are empty-handed, and he thinks they must have left the astrolabe behind, wherever they were. On the table between him and them is the watch, tick-tick-ticking. The woman looks at him, looks at the watch, looks back at him. He has to fetch it. He must not interact. Has he already made a mistake, just by being seen by these two?