The threshold crossed. Then a courtyard where gnarled old slaves chase chickens. A young scullery girl staring, immovable save for her tracking gaze, her skin as brown as her broom handle.

The gate. The street.

The infant wailing now, swung from a frantic hip, the woman scolding, weeping, crying out: “What are you doing? What has happened?”

Wake up, please! You’re scaring me!

A slender clutch knocked aside by a strong, wide-waving arm. Steps taken. Distances rolled up into oblivion. A tugging from spaces unseen. The woman shrieking, “My love! My love, please!”

What have I done?

Two hundred and fifty-seven years before, a Shigeki builder had saved twenty-eight silver talents by purchasing burnt brick from farther up the River Sempis, where the clay was riddled with sand. Aside from the tan hue, the tenement he raised was indistinguishable from the others. Over the course of the following centuries, the flood-waters had twice risen high enough to lave the southernmost pylons. Though the damage appeared minimal, sheets of material had fallen from the base of the outermost support, lending it a gnawed look, which for some reason, seemed to attract urinating dogs.

It toppled exactly when it should, drawing with it an entire quadrant, collapsing four floors of apartments and crushing all the unfortunates within. There was a roar, a collective peal of screams punched into silence. Afterwards, dust sweeping out and up. The earthen clap and tinkle of raining bricks. Then streets packed with shouting passers-by.

The woman and the infant were gone.

A life forgotten …

The streets. Miraculous numbers. Miraculous movement, like threads of sand falling into and through one another without collision or redirection.

The alleyways. The rainbow awnings, cooling the dust, shielding the walking files, dimming the sun to a threaded glare.

The great agora.

A peacock walking holy and unmolested through a parting crowd, iridescent eyes shimmering from its plumage, blessing all those who took care not to match them. A man barking, his face bent low and dangerous, then slapping the boy who walked with him. The click of teeth in paste. Two old men scratching their heads and laughing, lips drawn across gums, over teeth like pieces of broken pottery. A distempered dog limping up the temple steps, crooning low through half-open jaws.

A life…

She sat in the dust with the other wretches, a listless row of them in the shade of a temple wall, palms raised to catch rain, infirmities folded beneath tattered cloth or festering in the haze of dust. Indecent with age, threshed of all compassion, she sat begging. She did not look at the passing to and fro of miserly shadows.